Radiohead Music Group

The great riddle facing the record industry in the digital age has been pricing. Napster and its ilk puckishly offered music for "free" in the late 1990s, and the major labels have largely clung to an average of $13 for CDs despite plummeting sales and seasons of downsizing. Now, one of the world's most acclaimed rock bands, Radiohead, is answering that marketplace riddle with a shrug.

In the war to redefine the music industry, the Delaware has been crossed. Radiohead's decision to independently release its new album "In Rainbows" in downloadable format next week, for whatever price fans wish to pay, has pop's movers and shakers alternately applauding and flinching in the wake of the attack. But nobody is surprised that this band was in the boat -- after all, Radiohead has been rock's great scruffy hope since transcending mope-rock with "OK Computer" 10 years ago.

The one thing that download-happy Radiohead fans didn't get when they pulled the new "In Rainbows" album off the band's website recently was any of the distinctive art work that's been an integral part of the group's aesthetic since the beginning. Anyone who wants that has to pony up roughly $80 for the actual box set, which includes the new songs on CD and LP formats plus artwork from Dr. Tchock, the nom de canvas of Radiohead front man Thom Yorke, and artist Stanley Donwood.

Most Radiohead fans are choosing to download the British rock band's newest album without paying for it, according to researcher ComScore Inc. Fewer than 4 out of 10 fans worldwide who downloaded "In Rainbows" from Oct. 10 to Oct. 29 purchased it, paying $6 on average, ComScore said Monday.

After the digital release of Radiohead's latest album sent shock waves through the music industry, the band announced Monday that "In Rainbows" will have an old-fashioned release. A physical version of the British alt-rockers' seventh studio album will hit music stores Jan. 2. ATO Records Group will put out the disc in North America, where it will bear the band's imprint: TBD Records.

Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke will release his first solo album, "The Eraser," in July. Independent label XL Recordings said it would release the disc in Britain on July 10 and in the U.S. on July 11. Yorke said the project was undertaken with the band's blessing. Radiohead is now touring Europe and, according to Yorke, writing songs. After the tour concludes in late August, the band plans to return to the studio to record its seventh album.

Throat ailment or not, the show is expected to go on tonight for Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Radiohead is the scheduled headliner at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival tonight, but there has been anxiety that a severe throat infection would force Yorke to dash those plans. The word Friday from Coachella promoter Paul Tollet: "We've been told there are no problems and no chance of a cancellation. The band is in town, and everything should be fine."

On the Radiohead Web site, guitarist Jonny Greenwood says of the band's gripping new album, "Hail to the Thief": "We're summing up what it's like to be around in 2003." "Does he?" says Thom Yorke, the group's frontman, clutching his head in mock horror. "Oh, don't say that, Jonny!" Although Yorke balks at sonorous statements of intent, "Hail to the Thief" does have bold ambitions.

Coldplay's "A Rush of Blood to the Head" and Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" are the highest-profile finalists for the 2003 Panasonic Mercury Music Prize, the top award for British music album of the last year. The winner from the dozen finalists will be announced Sept. 9. -- Randy Lewis

Radiohead and the White Stripes are among the half-dozen most exciting bands in rock, though they have little in common except a contempt for the drab, unimaginative state of mainstream rock of the late '90s. After the critical and commercial success of their "OK Computer" album established Radiohead as rock's latest heroes in 1997, band leader Thom Yorke worried that rock was exhausted as an art form.