A new album from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is on the way, and it’ll be called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. With the help of and producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke just relayed the following message via email, which you can read below, and it reveals the album’s title as well as a mission statement.
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes will be released digitally via BitTorrent, with an affixed price, and the move is an effort to “[Bypass] the self elected gate-keepers.”
The album will essentially be a bundle of files that shape the album.
“It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around,” they write. “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.”
Read the entire statement below…
A MESSAGE FROM THOM YORKE AND NIGEL GODRICH
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
Meanwhile, as Radiohead enter the studio to work on a new record, Yorke posted this image a few days ago.
Exciting stuff.
