ENTERTAINMENT

Thom Yorke makes things right

Jeffrey Lee Puckett
@JLeePuckett
Thom Yorke is fighting the cloud.

In typical Thom Yorkeian fashion, he and producer Nigel Goodrich have revealed that they've made an "album" -- the quotation marks are theirs -- and that it will be made available via a BitTorrent that is not free.

Here's the statement, in all of its weirdly passive-aggressive glory:

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