Thom Yorke has been experimenting with the distribution of music once again, as you know by now thanks to multiple Music Times reports. How did his BitTorrent "experiment" work out? Depends what you consider a success.
Was there a considerable amount of interest in the Radiohead frontman's offering? Definitely. A spokesperson for BitTorrent told NME that the free package offered on the site was downloaded more than 116,000 times durings its first day online. What would be more revealing however is to know how many opted to pay around $5.98 for the entirety of his Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. The free package that was available for download offered eight tracks, not a bad sampling considering the lack of a price, but was it enough to entice buyers to pay a few extra bucks for the rest? Yorke, notably opposed to the streaming trend, is surely looking for a way to keep musicians from being forced to rely on streaming for income.
He and producer Nigel Godrich explained the premise in a press release earlier this week.
"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," it read. ""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."
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