Thom Yorke's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes has passed a million downloads

Thom Yorke's second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, had been downloaded more than a million times in under a week, BitTorrent announced on its blog on 2 October, and the experiment, it said, was working. The count lumps free downloads of the single, “A Brain In A Bottle”, and its video together with paid downloads of the eight-track album, which costs $6 behind a paygate.

How many of the million paid, BitTorrent would not say. A spokesperson put the total at 1.1 million. By the artist's request, we are not disclosing sales figures. But we have been very happy with what is happening.¹ Sales of the vinyl edition are not in the count.

Yorke released the album on 26 September with a statement written with Nigel Godrich. It's an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around.² If it worked, they said, anyone could do exactly as they had done, and hand some control of internet commerce back to the people who make the work. An artist keeps about 90 per cent of the money from a Bundle, Hypebot reports.

Matt Mason, BitTorrent's chief content officer, told The FADER around the release that the major labels are putting everything into streaming services that pay new artists little, which he, Yorke and Godrich all think short-sighted. Why, he asked, is nobody still trying to sell people music?

Yorke has since emailed fans about the album, and allowed that anyone who had missed the news may be perhaps because you don't engage with 'social media' in which case you have my utmost respect⁹.

Tracklist