Thom Yorke Releases New Album - 'Tomorrow's Modern Boxes' Via BitTorrent Bundle

Radiohead frontman and musical demigod Thom Yorke dropped his sophomore solo album ‘Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes’ on 27 September. The artist released the LP (solving the mystery of the mysterious white LP) via BitTorrent Bundle to a surprised industry just a day after he announced it.

This isn’t the first time Thom Yorke has experimented with new distribution portals – he’s always been a vocal critic of online distribution formats. His 2007 LP with Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’ attained huge, unanticipated success after it was released in a revolutionary pay-what-you-want format. In the letter the artist co-authored with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, he explains his reasons for distributing the album via BitTorrent arguing that “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” (read the whole thing here).

A BitTorrent Bundle is the same as any torrent, but includes the addition of a paygate. A payment of $6 gives listeners access to a bundle of files which in this case is an album. Of course, the Internet found a way to get rid of the paygate, giving users the option to download the album for free as a regular torrent only hours after its release. Despite this, ‘Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes’ has had over 360K (paid) downloads in less than 2 days and the graph only seems to be climbing. It’s a testament to the loyalty of Yorke’s fans and his own talent as an artist and trailblazer.

You can watch the video for album opener 'Brain In a Bottle' and buy 'Tomorrow's Modern Boxes' below:

Words: Diya Gupta