Radiohead’s Thom Yorke to distribute album through BitTorrent

Thom Yorke is making an end run around “the self-elected gatekeepers” and putting out a new solo album using BitTorrent instead of traditional distribution methods. The Radiohead singer and his producer Nigel Godrich issued a letter through their publicist Friday announcing “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.” The $6 download includes eight songs and a video. Yorke is the first artist using BitTorrent’s Bundles program to sell downloads, making it a test case for what could be another option for artists to monetize their music or videos.

[It’s] an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something the general public can get its head around.

Thom Yorke

BitTorrent as a company has the advantage of a huge built-in audience of more than 170 million monthly active users. With its bundles, it is clearly shooting to be a competitor in the artist-controlled self-publishing space, going head-to-head with companies such as Vimeo or VHX.tv—and a high-profile partner like Yorke could help the company to make inroads with other artists.

Thom Yorke Arts