Thom Yorke Bittorrent album (and Stanley Donwood artwork)

Well, not to be outdone and hot on the heels of U2 forced installation into everyone's iTune's library Thom Yorke has released his latest work on Bittorrent to bypass the 'gatekeepers'. Expect this to generate further blog-o-sphere discussion (isn't he one of the gatekeepers?) on from the In-Rainbows 'choose-your-own-pricing'. Looks like we're being treated to a range of new economic approaches, or should I really say 'marketing' by major brand stars as they transition from their 40s into their 50s.....

Here's the accompanying propaganda, erm, 'marketing' statement:

"As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record. The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files.. The files can be anything, but in this case is an ‘album’.

"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. 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. Oh yes and it’s called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich"

Anyway, hype and marketing aside, it's about the music and I'm looking forward to getting my ears onto this.

It's also good to see that Thom is keeping his collaboration with Stanley Donwood going, so this is a music/art project as well. I loved the work on The Eraser as this was classic linocut, which is one of my favourite formats to work with. They've been enigmatically twittering related artwork for some months now...