Thom Yorke's spokeswoman denies the $20 million BitTorrent figure

A spokeswoman for Thom Yorke has told The Independent that reports of him making £13 million from Tomorrow's Modern Boxes are totally and utterly false¹. The album has made nowhere near that, she said, and added if only!¹

The figure was Gigaom's, and NME and others repeated it on 6 January. BitTorrent had said the album, a $6 BitTorrent Bundle since 26 September, had been downloaded 4.4 million times. Gigaom multiplied the downloads by the price as though every one had been paid for, and arrived at about $20 million, or £13.1 million.

Those 4.4 million take in the free part of the bundle, the single “A Brain in a Bottle” and its video, as well as the paid album. BitTorrent keeps 10 per cent of each sale. Estimates have run from $1 million to $20 million, and The Independent calls the arithmetic behind them dubious.

The 4.4 million downloads made Yorke BitTorrent's most legally downloaded artist of 2014. When the album passed a million downloads in its first week, BitTorrent said the sales figures were being kept back at Yorke's request. He is still not saying what it has made.