Thom Yorke—singer of Radiohead, a band known for surprise releases—just put out a new album via BitTorrent, or more specifically BitTorrent Bundle, a relatively new thing for the torrenting giant. Where once torrents were the province of music, movie, and TV thieves (sorry, liberators), this new system adds a paygate. Yorke’s album, which is called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, is available for $6, which includes a video and eight songs. You will need to download a BitTorrent client to get it, which is clearly a pretty huge boon for a service that’s attempting to go legit. You can go get the album right here. Below, a track listing as well as Yorke’s entire statement (via his publicist) about the release. Warning: It contains the word “malarkey.”
- A Brain In A Bottle
- Guess Again!
- Interference
- The Mother Lode
- Truth Ray
- There Is No Ice (For My Drink)
- Pink Section
- Nose Grows Some
As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record.
The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files..
The files can be anything, but in this case is an ‘album’.
It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around …
If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.
Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.
Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.
If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.
The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.
It’s a self-contained embeddable shop front…
The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network.
Oh yes and it’s called
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.
Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich