Thom Yorke releases new album via BitTorrent

In a further effort to entirely ditch the middlemen of today's marketplace, Thom Yorke has announced the immediate digital release of a surprise new solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, via BitTorrent Bundles.

For a $6.00 'pay gate,' you can access the new album in its entirety. That means no convenience fees, no sales tax, and none of it goes to people who had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the album.

From BitTorrent Bundles: "A Pay Gate is a way for artists to generate revenue for their content. An artist may choose to provide some of the content for free, or require payment for the entirety of the Bundle. Once payment is received using one of our accepted Forms of Payment, the Bundle is unlocked and downloading will begin."

In the statement they've released through Radiohead's website, Yorke and Nigel Godrich said:

"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."

As of right now (Friday, September 26, 2014 at 12:15 CT) the bundle has been downloaded over twenty-four thousand times on just its first day. Yorke's previous solo effort, The Eraser, sold over ninety thousand copies in its first week. It would seem that this new experimental method of selling artistic works by way of torrent might actually be able to compete with the industry's traditional and evolving methods, while also educating their fans on ways of torrents. 

In addition to all of that, you can download A Brain In A Bottle, the first track (with video), for free.

I'm still wrapping my head around all this while simultaneously trying to get the BitTorrent client down. I think I've covered everything. You can read Yorke/Godrich's entire statement here, and you can click through to download the album here. Have fun. 

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