Our digital music world is continually evolving and both artists and record labels are constantly forced to try something new in an effort to maximize revenue, as evidenced by the latest U2 album giveaway on iTunes. Thom Yorke, the lead singer of the band Radiohead, has a very high global profile and a track record of going against established industry business practices.
That’s why his latest BitTorrent Bundle solo release, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, is such an interesting test case. If it sells well (and it appears that way so far), many within the industry look to it as a model for what the album release of the future may look like.
Of course, BitTorrent has been widely known as a primary source of content piracy in the past, a reputation that the company hopes it can finally shrug with it’s Bundles format, which puts content owners firmly and securely in control.
A Bundle allows music artists, authors, and film makers to create a digital package that allows a combination of free and “gated” (paid) content. It’s actually a single downloadable file that can contain audio, text, graphic or video assets in any combination. Each Bundle can be unlocked via a payment, Facebook Like or Tweet or anything else the content owner chooses.
Bundles were first introduced in May of 2013, and since then more than 120 million have been downloaded. There have only been a few high profile artists like Yorke though. Madonna released her Secretprojectrevolution movie on the platform as did Moby with his Innocents album. Of course, BitTorrent hopes that more high profile artists and groups will now consider Bundles as a distribution alternative on the heels of Yorke’s release. Read more on Forbes.
----------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment