The new album is called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, Yorke’s first solo album since 2006’s The Eraser. It was announced and released Friday.
The album features eight tracks, with titles like “A Brain in a Bottle” and “Pink Section.” It has been released not through big-box retailers or via iTunes — instead, it’s being released via BitTorrent. But don’t worry, Yorke isn’t asking you to pirate his music.
Rather, as the Verge explains, Yorke is using paid BitTorrent bundles.
So far, a few high-profile names like Madonna and Moby have experimented with BitTorrent bundles, but Yorke’s album will be the first to feature a price tag. It will retail for $6, or users can pay £30 (about $49 USD) for a deluxe vinyl edition. Yorke embraced the new format as it is a direct bridge between consumers and artists with no third party in between, though Yorke admits it could be confusing to some.
“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,” Yorke said, as part of a letter co-written with producer Nigel Godrich.
Thom Yorke and Radiohead are no strangers to releasing music in unconventional formats. Recently, Radiohead released a few new songs via its own PolyFauna app.
Most famously, Radiohead released 2007’s In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-can download, which at the time was considered revolutionary.
