Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has been confirmed as 2014s’ most legally downloaded artist on BitTorrent’s downloading and file sharing service
hom Yorke has been confirmed as BitTorrent’s most legally downloaded artist of 2014. Yorke released his second solo album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes through BiTorrent this September, a move that came after he had engaged in discussion with Oxford students on the best platform to release the record. The album was downloaded just under 120,000 times in only the first 24 hours of its release.
Yorke’s initial intention had been to release the record as a special bundle through BitTorrent – whose name is famed more for its illegal downloads – but elected to offer fans a £3.86 paygate for the full release. In a press release Yorke said “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.”
The ten most downloaded artists in 2014 were:
1. Thom Yorke
2. Diplo
3. Gramatik
4. De La Soul
5. Zeds Dead
6. G-Eazy
7. Ace Hood
8. Mad Decent
9. Vinyl Williams
10. Hundred Waters
Yorke’s band Radiohead famously allowed fans to ‘pay what you want’ for their 2007 album In Rainbows.
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