Thom Yorke’s surprise album, ‘Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes,’ hits BitTorrent

Here we go again.

Or not.

Less than three weeks after U2 dropped a new album, “Songs of Innocence,” into the iTunes libraries of an estimated half-billion people -- touching off widespread controversy about possible digital overreach -- Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke released a solo record online early Friday with little advance warning.

But he didn’t use Apple’s help to get the music out.

In a statement signed by the singer and his longtime producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke said “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” is being made available through BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file-sharing software, in an attempt “to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around.”

“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,” the statement continued. “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.”

Yorke and Godrich went on to say that “the torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.”

“Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes,” on sale as a digital download for $6, follows Yorke’s 2006 solo debut, “The Eraser.” Earlier this week Yorke shared a photo of a white vinyl record, leading to speculation that he or Radiohead had possibly completed a new studio album.

Twitter: @mikaelwood