Radiohead - In Rainbows (radiohead.com)

The most talked-about digital release of the year arrives just in time for our Christmas issue. As Time magazine said when the album was announced, “What makes In Rainbows important - easily the most important release in the recent history of the music business - are its record label and its retail price: there is none, and there is none.” So if you haven’t heard already, you can go to Radiohead’s website and pay what you want for the album, which comes as a 160kbps .ZIP file of MP3s. If you love physical product, there’s a very collector-friendly £40 box set version - or Discbox – available too. So, yes, you can download the new Radiohead album and pay nothing at all for it if you want to.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They wont let you take it without handing over your name, email address, postal address and mobile phone number. And is the album actually worth download, even if you don’t pay anything for it? Tracks like Bodysnatchers, which has been in the works for several years, are interesting, possible classic Radiohead songs, but not quite. And while thumping pieces like Reckoner are surely going to go down well in the US, it’s climbing back into the fragile world of Radiohead in Nude, a ballad first heard on the OK Computer tour, that means that, yes, you should have a good listen to this album, regardless of what you want to pay for it.