Thom Yorke releases BitTorrent Album or something...

[HorseTears]

Posted: 9/27/14 at 8:56am

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

LOVE Radiohead, but find Thom's solo material a mixed bag. Someone else pay the $6 and tell me if it's worth it.
tomorrowsmodernboxes.com

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 9/27/14 at 9:01am

So, what keeps someone from sharing after purchasing it? How is making it available for purchase in the same way that millions download for free going to stop the illegal downloading? Sounds like they have just made it so sharers don't have to covert anything to share it.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 9/27/14 at 9:05am

I don't really care about the distribution method, but it looks like a ton of other (smaller) artists are already doing this, but Thom is just the most prominent. He's said it's an experiment, so I'm guessing they have a dl/$ figure in mind to judge this experiment a success. I'm guessing that the main goal is not to combat file sharing (which, frankly, Yorke & co have never seemed to care about), but to find a distribution model in which more of the profits go directly back to the artist. Or something.

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/27/14 at 11:59am

Radiohead have experimented with alternative distribution routes for their past few albums. This is nothing too new. My question is, does it work? Is it any more efficient or useful than to use Bandcamp or any other indie distribution route?

[Islander_fan]

Posted: 9/28/14 at 12:52pm

@ Jersey Girl

I honestly don't think that having to pay for the digital album or not is going to alter the issue of illegally being able to download music. While I think that there are a lot of plus sides of buying music digitally, there's also a major downside in my opinion too. And, that is, once an album is on someone's computer, regardless of if they paid for it or not, it can still be made available online to get for free. For example, if you got a song or album off Itunes (which has their own personal media file for music) it's extremely easy to convert it to a common MP3 file and put it online. I think that that is a general issue regardless of whether or not you pay to download an album digitally or not.