Oh you lucky, lucky Radiohead fans. That nice Mr Yorke and his friends are giving you the chance to remix their latest single, Nude for free.

That gives you the chance to turn the dullest single ever into something vaguely worth listening to. Oh, you can call Nude sublime if you want to. But you’d be wrong of course.

And when I say ‘for free’, I mean you remix the track for Radiohead for free – you actually have to buy each part of the track from iTunes, then you upload it to their website. Oh, and did I mention that you obviously give up any and all rights to the track to Warner/Chappell Music.

Now, I’m sure you think Radiohead are the posterboys for the new method of music distribution, but I disagree. Here you have a band who are very adept at Internet marketing. The crowd at Digg fill their pants every time Radiohead put out a press release and proclaim them revolutionaries at every turn.

Yet here they are, saving themselves a fortune on expensive producers by getting their fans to do the donkey work without even so much as a credit at the end of the day.

I think this needs to be said, and we obviously can’t leave it to the mainstream media who are simply trotting out whatever the hell the press release says. Put simply, Radiohead are exploiting their fans for their own benefit and offering nothing in return. Not even a prize.

Wake up and smell the ripoff folks.

Fans are already starting to queue outside an East London record store after Radiohead announced that they will play a gig there this evening.

Radiohead announced on their website today that they would be playing at the Rough Trade East shop on Brick Lane, and for those that can’t fit into the store, contingency plans have been made:

“For those who can’t get in – and it’s pretty small in there – we’ll have some screens and speakers outside, if we’re allowed. I think we are. And we’ll also webcast it,” the band said on their website.

Rough Trade director Stephen Godfory said: “It’s great confirmation of what we do. We celebrate music. It’s not just a commodity but an art form. That’s clearly got resonance with the band.”

Doors open at 7PM.

According to Hands, the band were looking for a deal that would have cost EMI in the region of £10 million for:

• A £3 million advance for the In Rainbows album.
• Rights to Radiohead’s last two albums, resulting in a £4 million loss for the label, and
• A guarantee of £3 million to market the new album internationally.

That’s some shopping list, but on the Radiohead website, Yorke speaks out against these statements, claiming that Guy Hands is lying.

we did not ask for a load of cash from our old record label EMI to re- sign.
that is a L I E.
The Times in the UK should check its facts before it prints such dirt.
whAT we WANTED WAS some control over OUR WOrK and how it was used in the future by them-
that seemed REASONAblE to us,
as we cared about it a great deal.

Radiohead’s manager, Bryce Edge waded into the debate also, saying “We couldn’t move ahead with EMI because Guy Hands irrevocably refused to discuss the catalogue in any meaningful way. We sold 25 million records and we have the moral rights over those six albums. We wanted a say in how they are exploited in the future. We were not seeking a big advance payment, or a guaranteed marketing spend as discussions never got that far.”

An interesting state of affairs to say the least, especially considering that the band then went on to offer the album to fans at whatever price they wanted to pay. Conversely, they’ve faced some criticism for the high ticket prices on their tour and also not disclosing sales figures for the In Rainbows album downloads.

And while they’ve made innovative use of the Internet for promotion and sales of the album, Thom Yorke has come out and said that to do an Internet only release would have been madness.

“We didn’t want it to be a big announcement about ‘everything’s over except the internet, the internet’s the future’, ’cause that’s utter rubbish.

“And it’s really important to have an artefact as well, as they call it, an object,” the musician added.

Not the best news for the Digg crowd, who were upholding the band’s Internet shenanigans as the way forward for musicians to bypass the evil recording industry. Guess they’ll have to find some other way of sticking it to the man.

You know what I haven’t read? A decent review.

Two things you should know before we go on:

1. I’ve never been a big fan of Radiohead. They arrived at a hair metal point in my life and I’ve successfully avoided their music so far.
2. I haven’t sought out any reviews yet either. However, I have read the odd comment about the album on social media sites. They usually claim In Rainbows isn’t a patch on their previous material.

As little as I know about Radiohead, I know that their albums are considered sacred amongst their fans. People wax lyrical over the music, the enigmatic lyrics and stuff like that. OK Computer is revered as a classic.

However, with all the buzz that In Rainbows generated, no-one’s talking about the music. You’ll read thousands of words about how clever Radiohead were, but very little on how In Rainbows compares to the almighty OK Computer.

Is there a standout track on the album? Don’t know. In fact, it’s dubious if the album contains any music at all, because no-one’s talking about it!

It might be just me, but in pulling off this year’s biggest music promotion stunt, Radiohead might have just managed to overshadow their music completely. In the immortal words of the Arctic Monkeys – “see ya later, innovator”.