Thom Yorke Nears Half A Million Downloads For New BitTorrent Album
Thom Yorke's release of his latest solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, directly through the BitTorrent file sharing service appears to have been a successful gambit. As of noon on Monday, there had been more than 430,000 downloads.
While figures weren't provided for how many of those downloads had been of the free track and video on offer at the site, or how many users had shelled out the 6 dollar fee for the full album, Matt Mason, chief content officer of BitTorrent, told USA Today that the company was "been really, really happy at the conversion rate."
BitTorrent has been allowing users to download the album and taking 10% of the profits with the rest going to the artist. iTunes, for example, takes 30%,
Yorke Searches For Best Way To Sell Direct To Fans
"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," according to the launch announcement. "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," he continues. :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." – via Celebrity Access
