Instead of waiting until everyone grabs it for free anyway, Thom Yorke went to the source and released his latest solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, through BitTorrent. It was downloaded 4.4 million times, which at $6 a pop, comes to “more like 15 $$$tep.”
The paid portion of the bundle, which included seven songs, cost $6 to download — meaning the total amount of revenue generated by the project could be as high as $26 million. Since BitTorrent gives 90 percent of the income from its bundles to the artist, that means Yorke could have made almost $24 million from the album. That’s far more than he likely would have made releasing it using almost any other traditional method. (Via)
Gigaom notes the exact figure Yorke earned is likely less than $20 million-plus — it “assumes that everyone who downloaded the bundle paid for it” — but even if the number’s cut in half, it’s still impressive. Maybe he can afford some dance classes now.
