Well, a lot of people have listened to at least one Thom Yorke track this week. Downloads of the BitTorrent bundle for his new Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes albums stood at 694.2k this morning as we wrote the Bulletin, four and a half days after its release. And no, that doesn’t mean nearly 700,000 people have paid $6 for the album: the bundle is available as a free download with a single track and video unlocked, with the rest hidden behind its pay-gate. BitTorrent’s Matt Mason told USA Today that the company has been “been really, really happy at the conversion rate” while declining to reveal exactly what that rate is. Hence, SPECULATIVE MATHS: even at a 10% conversion rate, the album will have already generated more than $416k, with BitTorrent taking a 10% share of that. If the conversion rate was more of a Spotify-style 25%, the takings so far will be past $1m. With Yorke and collaborator Nigel Godrich having said that “if it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done” when launching the bundle, we hope they’ll be sharing conversion stats at some point, to help other musicians gauge the success of the venture.
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…