What price innovation?

HOW long is a piece of string? What colour is Friday? Why is Paris Hilton?

To this list of perennial conundrums, we can now add "What price music?", thanks to Radiohead's audacious decision to allow fans to download their new album, pending a full commercial release early next year, and pay whatever they choose, be it the going rate for a CD, megabucks, or nothing at all. Although the download age has already prompted fierce discussions along these lines, no-one has quite bucked the system like this before.

Prince gave away his latest album for the price of a newspaper, but the only moral dilemma attached to that transaction was whether or not the consumer was prepared to buy that particular rag. This feels more momentous. Given Radiohead's furrowed-brow integrity, which has previously manifested itself in a refusal to allow any sponsorship or branding on their tours, it smacks of a sincere attempt to stoke the debate, rather than some stunt manoeuvre.

As it happens, Radiohead are one of the most successful and certainly the most acclaimed bands of the day, so they can well afford this experiment. They surely don't need the money, and they are currently between deals, so there is no record company breaking out in a cold sweat in the corner. But still, it's a genius move.

Part of the appeal is the speed and lack of fuss with which they executed this coup. These days an album release by a major band would be planned out far in advance like a military operation with accompanying colossal marketing campaign. Instead, without label intervention, Radiohead finished their album (admittedly, this bit took four years), decided to let the fans hear it as soon as possible, announced this via a humble website posting seemingly out of the blue and, bam, here it is.

Did anyone - even zealous fans glued to the Radiohead message board trying to decipher their coded messages - really see this coming? As it turns out, the band had been "considering dissemination" in this way for some time, attracted by the idea that everyone gets to hear the music for the first time at the same time - no preview privileges for us pesky reviewers, for a start. Since the news broke last week, much has been said - and will continue to be said - about the democratisation of music supply.

The method of delivery shouldn't really affect the way anyone regards the music, yet does create a sense of occasion. This is just as well, as In Rainbows doesn't break new musical ground for this normally progressive group. It is ten tracks long, and so recognisably Radiohead that they stray into by-the-numbers territory on a couple of tracks.

The usual Radiohead signatures are here in abundance - the sparse skittering beats, Thom Yorke's fidgety obsessive vocal delivery, the sense that they are laying on sonic components rather than simply writing a song. What is lacking is the killer track that could become a future Radiohead classic. Completists will have heard much of the material before in different incarnations at gigs or on bootlegs.

Nude has apparently been considered for every Radiohead album since it was first written ten years ago. Now the band have recorded a version they are happy with, this spectral swoon is a lovely mood piece that still doesn't quite hit the emotional spot in the same way as contemporary tracks Morning Bell or Pyramid Song. Likewise familiar and accessible, Bodysnatchers is a maniacal 21st- century garage freak-out in the vein of The National Anthem, or like U2 stung by a wasp.

The rest of the album is never as rock as it is here. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi is more of a sound picture than a song, on which Yorke's soulful, almost peaceful account of suicidal intent contrasts with the hectic rhythms. He lays himself bare to love on All I Need, which recalls Brian Eno's plangent soundscapes for David Bowie's Low album.

Both tracks are unexpectedly reminiscent of The Blue Nile in atmosphere. The other notable atmospheric highlight is the closing piano ballad, Videotape, which conveys a sense of mounting foreboding and sounds like a companion piece to former Yorke collaborator PJ Harvey's stunning current album. Of course, if you have chosen to pay nada for this album, then it's all a bonus isn't it?

But I long for Radiohead to get properly reacquainted with melody and for Yorke to quit the moaning or muttering delivery and rediscover his voice as an unabashed lead instrument capable of spinetingling emotional resonance. However, Radiohead haven't quite revealed their entire hand yet. There are eight bonus tracks slated to appear on the disc-box version of In Rainbows, containing CD, vinyl, artwork and all, which will be released in December.

In its case, the answer to our original question is ВЈ40.