Posted on Monday, October 14th, 2013 by Will Hagle
BitTorrent Bundles are pre-packaged torrents filled with all types of media from your favorite artists — or uploaded by you!
BitTorrent has long understood that the media industry is changing, and the power has drastically shifted from content distributors to consumers. From Radiohead’s In Rainbows pay-what-you-want to Louis C.K.’s $5, downloadable video specials, direct communication between artists and consumers is all that’s necessary anymore.
BitTorrent’s new feature, Bundles, allows artists and content creators to more easily connect with their fans. The site offers content spanning all sorts of media — from audiobooks to full albums — basically anything downloadable in a torrent format. It also organizes the most popular media on the site and makes it easy to scroll through. The top Bundle now, for instance, is Moby’s new album Innocents. If you click on the download link for the album, the torrent immediately downloads to your computer. You then need a BitTorrent client to access the audio and video files within the torrent. You’ll also need to enter your email and pay whatever price you want in order to access the content.
Bundle your own Awesome Content.The site also offers links that lead to ways to purchase tangible copies of whatever item it is that you’re downloading. The link to chef Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Chef, for instance, includes two links. One leads to the Amazon page offering Ferriss’s book in its hardcover format, and the other leads to the BitTorrent bundle. The hardcover edition costs $20 and takes at least two days to be delivered. The BitTorrent bundle can be downloaded immediately, for whatever price you choose. It also comes with two PDFs, three videos and the entire audiobook file. To me, that’s an easy choice. Still, it’s nice to have options. BitTorrent Bundle allows any content creator to offer their art on the site. Any files you choose — art, movies, music, etc. — is all held in one single file that’s simple for your fans to download. This helps artists engage with fans, and vice versa. The website is an incredibly good idea, and should help disrupt the current modes of content distribution (in a good way).
