BitTorrent has spent the last couple of years trying to torrenting into a legitimate method for people to acquire their favorite media, and it looks like its working. Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, has made somewhere around $25 million by releasing his second solo album through the BitTorrent Bundle service in just a few short months.
Torrents have grown up and are now making money for artists. File sharing company BitTorrent has announced in a blog post Thom Yorke’s Tommorrow’s Modern Boxes was downloaded over 4.4 million times since its September release. The album was released as a $6 BitTorrent Bundle, a digital package of content sold by an artist who retains 90 percent of the profits. Tommorrow’s Modern Boxes’ 4.4+ million downloads account for more than $26.4 million. With a 90 percent share of the profits, Yorke’s take should be an impressive $23.76 million off the bundle that included eight songs and one music video. By comparison, the Frozen soundtrack has sold 3.46 million copies since January and is considered the highest selling album of 2014.