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Why Thom Yorke is really selling his new album on BitTorrent [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.](Oregonian (Portland, OR) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 26--Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke released his second solo album on Friday, delivering "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" through a different, surprising method: BitTorrent. But what seems like an unconventional move has been years in the making. The file-sharing software, which combines multiple P2P data exchanges into a powerful pipeline, or "torrent," that anyone can tap into, has long been the preferred method of pirates. In October 2007, the same month Radiohead shocked the music industry with its pay-what-you-want release of "In Rainbows," users panicked when police shut down OiNK, a private BitTorrent music community that had collected tens of thousands of illegally shared records -- at the time, what appeared to be a substantially larger collection than official digital stores such as iTunes. Even Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor admitted to being a fan. Pirate sites, such as the Pirate Bay, continue, with movies, TV shows and software also among the offerings. After the demise of OiNK, music nerds scampered deeper into the underground on new sites such was What.cd and Waffles.fm. But the access problem that many once complained about has largely been solved by vast cloud services such as Spotify and YouTube; while piracy numbers remain high, many have followed the law of convenience and now use simple, legal services. Spotify alone has 40 million active users. Whether streaming services that pay a fraction of a penny per play have improved things much for musicians who once ranted against piracy is a divisive and much-argued question. More recently, the company behind the original BitTorrent software has pushed into legal alternatives as well: its BitTorrent Sync offers Dropbox-like file backup between computers, and it has worked with artists such as Madonna to test the waters of commercial efforts with its BitTorrent Bundles. But Yorke is the first artist to sell an album with them, today's "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes." Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich have spoken out against Spotify and its micro-payments: you won't find his previous album, "The Eraser," or Atoms for Peace's "Amok" on the service. Yorke could've released his new album in any number of ways: he could've dropped it on iTunes, Beyonce-style, or self-released through Bandcamp; he could've given it to a label-run web store like Bleep, home to his beloved Aphex Twin. So why BitTorrent? "As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record," Yorke and Godrich said in a press release. "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." Billboard reports that Bittorrent will collect 10% of profits from the sales, less than the 30% cut iTunes takes, but on par with the 10% taken by DIY retailer Bandcamp (which takes a 15% cut until a seller reaches $5,000 in sales) -- and Bittorrent has yet to make its vending apparatus open-source or widely available, which means for now, yes, Yorke's simply chosen one gatekeeper over another. It's also worth mentioning that any artist can work with a distributor, such as TuneCore or Portland's own CD Baby, to release an album on iTunes, Spotify and other music hubs. What Bittorrent does offer is a lack of central database -- you're not downloading from iTunes or Amazon or Bandcamp, but from everyone else who's grabbed the files. "The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or 'cloud' malarkey," Yorke and Godrich wrote. "The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network." However, Yorke may have other reasons for choosing BitTorrent. Let's consider some numbers. On the private BitTorrent site What.cd, the heir to OiNK, Radiohead appear to be the single most-downloaded band. 2011 album "The King of Limbs" has over 40,000 pirated downloads, making it the most popular studio album ever on the site -- only a compilation gathered by the site's users outranks it in total downloads. 2007's pay-what-you-want "In Rainbows" has over 26,000, and the rest of the band's albums are similarly popular. For whatever reason, Radiohead has always drawn tech-savvy audiences, and their albums have a long history of online transmission -- whether it was the album leak of "Kid A" over Napster, an unmastered version of "Hail to the Thief" sneaking out months before its 2003 release or the band's game-changing "In Rainbows" move. And those audiences don't always like to pay for their music. For pirates who haven't shifted to legal methods, BitTorrent is essentially YouTube: a one-stop tool and (free) shop for all their media. And pirates really, really like Radiohead. I noted "King of Limbs" has over 40,000 What.cd downloads in the last three years: after its debut morning, "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" is already at 47,500. In these fractured times, artists have to come their audiences. Yorke releasing his album on BitTorrent isn't an escape from gatekeepers, not yet. It's just a savvy move to a popular marketplace. -- David Greenwald ___ (c)2014 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Visit The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) at www.oregonian.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |