Radiohead are, without doubt, one of the biggest groups to have emerged from the UK ever. They are unique in being a modern-day British band just as loved in the Stated as they are in their native country.

When the band released In Rainbows in 2007 they also became great innovators, being one of the first artists to try and use the power of the Internet rather than try and rally against the new ways of distributing music.

Now, Radiohead are well on the way to releasing their next album, the eagerly-awaited follow-up to In Rainbows. Back in September, Ed O’Brien revealed that many of the songs for the next release had already been written, and fellow band member Colin Greenwood has now revealed the band are in the studio recording new material.

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Radiohead are collaborating with their fans in ever more intriguing and interactive ways. Not only did they decide to give their album away for free, but they now seem to be regarding In Rainbows as belonging to the fans as much as it belongs to the band itself.

Such was the case with the new music video for Reckoner, which was actually made by a fan for a competition. The band liked the promo so much that they decided to make it the official video instead of just a contest winner. Thom Yorke was even impressed enough to give the video praise despite not quite being with it.

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The last Radiohead album, In Rainbows, was not only musically brilliant, but was also a revelation for the way it was released. Radiohead decided to eschew giving the album its début on physical formats, and instead chose to release it on the Internet for free (or as near as damn it).

But that all happened almost a year ago now, with the download being available from October 10th, 2007. In Rainbows has since been released on CD and vinyl, but it’s now time to move on, and the band are already working on their next album. In fact most of it is already complete.

After losing the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize to Elbow last week, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien spoke to BBC 6Music about the band’s forthcoming plans. According to the NME, he said:

“We’re still talking about doing some stuff and we’re really excited about it. First we came off tour to do some writing and we wanted to carry on doing it because it was so brilliant.”

Modest as ever, but it’s great news for Radiohead fans everywhere that a new album is already in the offing. If it’s already at that stage of completion, then I’d guess a 2009 release was on the cards. The only question left is whether the In Rainbows model will be used again, or will the follow-up see a much more traditional release?

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Radiohead may have started the trend, and The Charlatans then got in the act, but Marillion are the latest band to have decided to embrace the Web and give away their new album. Happiness Is The Road is to be a free download on file-sharing sites such.

This deal is different than the Radiohead offer for In Rainbows, where fans were asked to pay what they felt was suitable for the new album. The new Marillion album will be available as a completely free download, with the only catch being a pop-uip box asking file-sharers to give the band their email address.

The supplied address would then allow Marillion to contact these fans, both new and old, with details of upcoming gigs, merchandising offers, and news on what the band is up to next. Which isn’t too much of a compromise for getting a full album download for free in return.

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When Radiohead offered their new album In Rainbows, for free through their website last year, many industry analysts and bigwigs watched the results very closely to see if the model was workable. The album has since been released on physical formats but the download experiment gained Radiohead a lot of new fans and masses of press.

However, despite the good intentions of the band, it seems that the majority of Radiohead fans decided free just wasn’t cheap enough for them and so downloaded it from illegal sources such as torrent tracking and peer-to-peer sites instead.

The findings come from a joint research paper published by P2P monitor Big Champagne and the UK’s MCPS-PRS royalty collector. According to NME, the report suggests that 2.3 million people eschewed the officially sanctioned download portal inrainbows.com to instead download it by other non-sanctioned means.

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The Mercury Music Prize, sponsored by Nationwide, is the annual award given to the best album by a British or Irish artist released in the previous 12 months. The ceremony isn’t until later in the year, but a short-list is first released, with the name of the 12 artists, and their albums, on it which the judges think are the best of British.

Having said that, the Mercury Music Prize has a history of choosing albums by up and coming artists, rather than necessarily widely known artists, and certainly not the best-selling ones. Which means there are always some huge surprises in the short-list, and more often than not, in the eventual winner chosen as well.

Last year saw Klaxons named as winners, for their début album Myths Of The Near Future. They beat the Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal, and Amy Winehouse along the way, although Winehouse’ performance at the awards ceremony probably invoked more press coverage than the Klaxons themselves.

This year’s short-list has now been published, and the usual surprises are present, as well as there being many names missing that were expected to appear.

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Radiohead have received almost nothing but praise for challenging music industry standards when they released In Rainbows on to the Internet last year, and invited people to pay what they wanted for the privilege of downloading the album.

In effect, this meant you could nab a brand new album by one of the best British bands ever, for free.

Step forward Noel Gallagher, Oasis’ guitarist and chief songwriter. He’s not impressed with the idea, and vows never to do the same for an Oasis album.

Which is a shame because Oasis’ new album Dig Out Your Soul is due out in a few months, and I would have loved the chance to nab it for a penny.

Gallagher of course, is no stranger to controversy, and is a master of saying what he thinks in a blunt manner, knowing that he will gain publicity for his comments. This can sometimes land him in trouble though, as his negative comments about Jay-Z headlining Glastonbury spectacularly backfired when Jay-Z mocked him at the start of his set, and then went on to triumph.

So I wonder what the fall out will be from his latest comments about Radiohead, In Rainbows, and releasing a new album.

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Alternative British rockers Radiohead left their long time record label EMI last year and decided instead to put out In Rainbows over the Internet for free in an experiment which has seen many copycats.

However, EMI obviously still wants to make some money off the band, and so are preparing to release a greatest hits compilation called Radiohead: The Best Of this summer.

Outspoken frontman Thom Yorke isn’t too happy with this blatant attempt at making profits from the group even though they are no longer with the label, and has slammed EMI’s plans in an interview with music magazine The Word.

“We haven’t really had any hits so what exactly is the purpose?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it. The work is really public property now anyway, in my head at least. It’s a wasted opportunity in that if we’d been behind it, and we wanted to do it, then it might have been good.”

He also had quite a lot to say about the band’s departure from the label, which became big news due to the arguments and accusations behind the scenes which occurred.

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Radiohead pioneered the idea of music artists forging their own path, without the need for record labels controlling everything, when they decided to allow their fans to pay what they deemed suitable for the In Rainbows album download last year.

Since then, many bands have taken up the mantle, with Prince and Nine Inch Nails the biggest names to be experimenting.

Even boring old Coldplay have seen huge support for their decision to release a single free over the Internet.

But however successful and innovative the move was, it seems that Radiohead aren’t planning on repeating it any time soon, with rontman Thom Yorke telling The Hollywood Reporter:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation,” Yorke said of the band’s downloading policy for the album “In Rainbows.”

“It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

This is terrible news, as I really thought Radiohead were going to be leading the call for a revolution to occur in how music was distributed to fans.

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How big a Radiohead fan are you? Could you sit through a four hour video remix of just one of their songs? I hope so, as that is exactly what serial remixer James Rutledge is planning to release.

Radiohead have been one of the most innovative, creative and experimental British bands over the last few years.

From their very ordinary Indie beginnings, they have created unique album after unique album, and virtually created a genre in the process.

This experimental nature went a stage further last year with the almost free digital release of newest album In Rainbows. To accompany this, visual elements were also released via YouTube, and the music videos weren’t exactly traditional either.

Now, producer and budding music genius James Rutledge is carrying on the trend of innovation by releasing a four hour long remix of the song Videotape, with accompanying visuals.

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