The past 12 months have been interesting for music, particularly when it comes to the ever-looming question of distribution in the digital age. More specifically, artists are continually struggling to figure out how to distribute their music digitally and still manage to turn a profit.

One of the most unlikely resources that has popped up for musicians in recent months is the file-sharing platform BitTorrent, which we’re sure readers are totally unfamiliar with and have never, ever used in their lives. Never. Not for music, or movies, or anything else, right?

Seriously, though, while many will know BitTorrent as the scourge of any honest, hard-working artist, as The Fader reports, the past year has seen the network expanding their legal reach within the music community with the introduction of BitTorrent Bundle, a new direct-to-fan publishing platform for musos.

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Following on from artists like Public Enemy releasing new music via a BitTorrent pack, the concept went mainstream in September when Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke used the file-sharing service to release his second studio album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, which was available to fans at $6 a pop.

“It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around,” said Yorke upon the album’s initial release. “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 result? The album was downloaded a staggering 1.1. million times in its first week of release. It was the first such bundle to be paywalled and has now been officially declared the most downloaded music bundle of 2014, according to BitTorrent’s newly unveiled end-of-year report.

Readers can check out the file-sharing platform’s top 10 most downloaded music bundles of 2014 to see who else made the list and some of them might surprise you. Just missing the top spot is Diplo, who is followed by Gramatik, hip-hop legends De La Soul, and Zeds Dead, who round out the top five.

BitTorrent’s Top 10 Most Downloaded Music Bundles

1. Thom Yorke
2. Diplo
3. Gramatik
4. De La Soul
5. Zeds Dead
6. G-Eazy
7. Ace Hood
8. Mad Decent
9. Vinyl Williams
10. Hundred Waters

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