Thom Yorke Releases Surprise New Album

Thom Yorke's new album 'Tomorrow's Modern Boxes' has been released on BitTorrent.

As an experiment, the new record has been released using a new version of the popular download website, which employs a pay gate so users can access bundles of music files at a time.

The 45-year-old Radiohead lead singer said: "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."

The new album is Yorke's first solo record in eight years and the bundle includes the music video for 'Brain In A Bottle', one of the album tracks.

While the files can just be individual songs or other types of download, in this instance an entire Thom Yorke album is available, making it a landmark moment for the download portal.

The new approach is being used as a trial to see if the public is interested in downloading music using the innovative website.

Assuming it works well, Yorke claims BitTorrent could become an effective way of handing control of internet commerce to those people who are creating the work.

BANG Showbiz