Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney and Alanis Morrissette did deals with every crusty's favourite globalisation villain, Starbucks, exclusively allowing them to distribute their new records, while last week Radiohead announced a bizarre new strategy for its forthcoming album In Rainbows.

Radiohead have set up an online 'honesty box' where, apart from a standing charge of around 1, buyers decide what they want to pay. In effect they are to give away the album for free and this has put the frighteners up record companies . . . again. What if it catches on? Where will they get any money from at all?

But it's a funny thing the subtle difference between giving an album away . . . like Prince did with a certain newspaper last month . . .and the Radiohead plan. The key difference here is that buyers are being asked to place a value on it, so by definition it is not 'free' unless you put 'zero' value on it.

But if you put 'zero' value on it then you have just contradicted yourself by wanting it. Why do you want something if you think it's worth nothing? It's classic Radiohead. But why are they doing this? Firstly, they can.

Having seen out their five-album contract with Parlophone after 2003's Hail To The Thief the band, who had grown more and more exhausted of the workhorse schedule of tour-record-promorelease etc, decided to work on their own projects. They had also become aware of the inherent contradiction of being a huge band with moral and political convictions. Flying all over the world left a huge carbon footprint, for example.

And how could they espouse the theories of Alastair MacIntosh and Naomi Klein while profiting from a monolithic world tour using trillions of kilowatts of electricity every night? Thom Yorke, never the lightest of beings, would just not be able to look himself in the mirror.

Then there is the band's general contrariness and unpredictability. There was nothing on their first album, 1993's Pablo Honey, save for 'Creep' and 'Anyone Can Play Guitar', that suggested they would come up with an album like The Bends . . . which is arguably the most important album of the 1990s bar none.

While OK Computer saw this unique blend of prog/emo/grunge developed even further, there were further shocks in the post for both fans and band members alike when they decided to eschew the rock idiom and record an electronica record. The drummer, Phil Selway, was none too pleased. Kid A went on to become the band's biggest selling album, reaching number one in the United States. Its attendant, Amnesiac, my favourite Radiohead album of all, merely confirmed they had become the weirdest big band in the world or the biggest weird band in the world.

Hail To The Thief, the title track itself an assault on the political apparatus that got George Bush re-elected, was a return to a more middle ground but to these ears sounded like the band needed to step back and find the love again.

Every day since has been a lesson in patience as every Radiohead headline is scoured for news of when the new album will be released. It is widely believed to be both a blessing and a curse that Radiohead are working without a record company . . . perfectionists without paymasters tend to take an eternity and sometimes just come up with nothing at all.

It will finally be released online next Friday.

You can place an order on www. radiohead. com and there is a delux vinyl package which is priced at �40 per album. To me this merely highlights the fact that an honesty box only relies on honesty when it can afford to.

You don't see them taking any chances losing real money; ie the packaging and very obvious production costs of making physical records and sleeves and artwork. It's a different ballgame clicking the Apple+D button to duplicate an MP3 file and give it away for free.

No, it appears that bands like Radiohead, after all, believe that music should be as free as possible as often as possible.