Of Course Thom Yorke's BitTorrent Album Was Immediately Pirated Using BitTorrent

Thom Yorke, Radiohead frontman and visionary when it comes to music release models just dropped a new solo album through BitTorrent.

The catch? It's the first ever torrent that has a paywall.

Once again, Yorke is experimenting with revenue models. Perhaps unsurprisingly, within minutes of its release, pirated versions began popping up on the, umm, trackers where you can find such things.

Yorke and Radiohead got tons of buzz for "pioneering" the pay-what-you-want model for In Rainbows, though several other groups had been doing it long before Yorke did. Likewise, many bands have released albums using BitTorrent. To his credit, there's no denying that what Radiohead did bring the pay-what-you-want model into prominence.

How ironic, then, that the man who made the whole download-this-for-free thing popular is now trying to make money using a medium that most still associate with piracy.

"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," Yorke wrote in a statement. "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," he continued. "The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or 'cloud' malarkey."

BitTorrent takes 10 percent of the overall revenue after transaction costs, for those of you wondering. The company says that this new "paygate" initiative is one that can prove BitTorrent's worth as a legit content distributor (and Yorke's participation certainly lends some credibility to that effort).

"It's an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around," Yorke added.

That's perhaps a bit condescending, considering that millions of people have been able to wrap their heads around the mechanics of BitTorrent for years now. BitTorrent is still one of the most popular ways to distribute pirated content. For proof of that, look no further than the thousands of people currently using it to do just that.