Thom Yorke fights ‘bad year for music innovation’ with BitTorrent album release


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Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has rush-released an experimental album via BitTorrent, in the hope of expunging the memory of a ‘bad year for music innovation’ according to the man he has joined forces with to make it happen.

Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes‘ is Yorke’s first collection of solo material since 2006’s ‘The Eraser‘ and comes at a time when he has all but confirmed Radiohead are in the studio working on a new album of their own.

A statement co-authored with his long-term collaborator Nigel Godrich explains the unusual method of release. “As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record,” it reads.

“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.”

Meanwhile, in a revealing interview with NME, BitTorrent chief Matt Mason has elaborated further on how the idea first came about and evolved, while also saying the two parties are hoping to brighten up what he thinks has been a gray year for music innovation, the best example of which was ‘the button Apple released to remove the U2 album’.

“The biggest innovation in music this year so far has been Apple releasing a tool to remove a U2 album from your iTunes,” he says. It’s been a bad year for music innovation. The way major labels just throw all their music on Spotify, they’ve given up on selling people music. We hope to prove with this and our work with other artists – we’ve worked with Madonna, Linkin Park as well as lots of rising names – that there’s another way.”

The ‘Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes’ tracklist is as follows:

‘A Brain In A Bottle’
‘Guess Again!’
‘Interference’
‘The Mother Lode’
‘Truth Ray’
‘There Is No Ice (For my Drink)’
‘Pink Section’
‘Nose Grows Some’


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