Now pay attention: the link I posted below, which promised some kind of revelation about the new Radiohead album, proved to be a hoax. But a timely hoax: this morning it has been revealed officially that LP7 - In Rainbows, it's called - finally has a release date. And it's sooner than you think!

Here's Murray: "www.radiohead.com is open for business with pre-orders having begun today for their 7th studio album "In Rainbows", which will be available from October 10 as an MP3 download. Also available to pre-order from now is the Discbox, a special edition box-set".

Said box set includes both CD and vinyl versions of the album, plus a bonus disc of extra songs, and will be shipped on the 3rd of December but purchasers will be tided over with the mp3 version of the album. The site is a little cagey about how much these things cost: a bit of clicking back and forth reveals that said Discbox is £40. FORTY POUNDS! Confirmation to all who always thought Yorke (left) and co were thieving capitalist bastards (think back to all those lyrics: "I will stop at nothing"; "we suck young blood"; etc).

But wait! The mp3 only format costs... exactly how much you want it to cost! The site allows you to name your price. Ah, get them - they're nice chaps after all! Apparently LP7 has been finished and lying around for ages; they were merely working out how to release the thing, their contract with EMI having run its course.

Compare and contrast with the Charlatans, who today announced plans to release their next single, You Cross My Path, as a free download. Says manager, Alan McGee: "I thought, 'well, nobody buys CDs anyway'. If you talk to a 19-year old kid, they don't buy CDs... everything is downloaded digitally from the internet for nothing. I came to the conclusion: 'why don't we just give it away for nothing?'".

I suspect there is a simple lesson in economic supply and demand in here somewhere. The Charlatans, dear hearts that they are, no longer have the cachet they once had, hence the decision to 'experiment'. It is hard to imagine this new single of theirs winning them vast swathes of new fans, but the move will at least satisfy those like me, who still find themselves humming A Man Needs to Be Told as they roll out pastry. But its very freeness does rather cheapen the thing artistically as well as monetarily; "It's free?" as I once heard a banker say to a London Paper pusher on his way to buy the Evening Standard (London's Quality Newspaper), "well it can't be any good then".

Radiohead can rest easy in the knowledge that their fans, whose allegiance runs deep, will sign up for the mp3 in droves, donating a token amount to thank the band for their generosity, then blink, sigh, and tentatively part with £40 for solid, slightly exclusive Discbox artefact as well - and, on 3 December, subject that bonus CD to £40 worth of scrutiny. The very expense of the thing immediately makes it a desirable object - rather like a Gucci bag, a badge of your fannish devotion. This all strikes me as an excellent way to release records: practically give away the mp3s - I still can't get used to paying for those ephemeral things - and turn the hard copy into a sort of objet d'art. It's taken Radiohead a split with their major label to take this decision - but I hope it proves to be a pioneering concept.