Thom Yorke releases Tomorrow's Modern Boxes as a paid BitTorrent Bundle

Thom Yorke released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, today with no warning, as a paid BitTorrent Bundle of eight tracks and a video for $6. The opening track, “A Brain in a Bottle”, is free to download with its video. It is his first solo album since The Eraser in 2006; in between, Atoms for Peace, his band with Nigel Godrich, put out Amok last year.

The album is not in the download shops or on the streaming services. The only other way to buy it is a deluxe edition on 180-gram white vinyl, £30 from W.A.S.T.E., the band's online shop. It comes sealed in an anti-static shield bag, the metallised wrap the electronics industry uses for components, printed neon green on both sides.

Yorke and Godrich announced it in a letter signed by both that calls it an experiment, to see whether the public will take to a torrent with a pay gate in front of it. If it works, they argue, musicians, film-makers and anyone else making digital work could sell it themselves, with no servers or hosting costs, since the network both carries the traffic and holds the file. Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers. If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.¹

Last Sunday Yorke posted a photograph of an unlabelled white twelve-inch on a turntable beside Stanley Donwood's wave artwork, the design used on The Eraser and Amok, and Godrich shared it; guesses ran from a Radiohead record to Atoms for Peace or a solo album. On Tuesday morning Yorke tweeted the words of “A Wolf at the Door”, the last track on Hail to the Thief, with new lines typed in and marked by hand. DIY reported him saying the text came out of work with Donwood in the Radiohead studio, where the band were on their second day of overdubs.

BitTorrent is presenting the album as the launch of Bundles that artists can charge for; until now they have been free. Matt Mason of BitTorrent told NME he met Godrich through Godrich's manager, and the two agreed to work on ideas over a cup of tea in London on Christmas Eve. He says the company was inspired by the way In Rainbows changed things. That album was announced on 1 October 2007, came out on the 10th and let buyers choose their price; this one had no notice at all. Would we work with him on more releases and perhaps even the next Radiohead album? We'd absolutely love to.²

Tracklist