It is the most eagerly awaited album of the year from the "best band in the world". But a month before the first CD has made it into the shops the songs are already freely available on the internet.
Kid A, the album on which Radiohead have been toiling since OK Computer became the epitome of 90s cool, can be downloaded on Napster, the controversial website which the music industry is trying to shut down.
All but two of the tracks on the album, which is officially released in October, were available at the weekend on the site which the multinationals and some pop stars claim has robbed them of $2.5bn (£1.7bn)in royalties.
Sunset (Bird Of Prey), the new single from Fatboy Slim, also turned up on Napster last week, long before it was due to be released. And in the most surprising development of all, the Smashing Pumpkins released their latest album, Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music, on the internet free as a gesture to an industry "poisoned with greed".
Despite the series of multi-million dollar piracy lawsuits hanging over it and its 19-year-old founder, Shawn Fanning, Napster, it seems, is thriving.
Since the first cases were brought against it in the US courts in April by the rock band Metallica and Time Warner/AOL, traffic on the site has quadrupled, while its prosecutors have seen sales drop.
Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan believes Metallica misjudged the mood of their fans. "They looked greedy. Most fans see it in simplistic terms - that Metallica don't love them enough to share their music with them."
Napster's democratic nature - fans automatically share all the MP3 music files on their computers when they log on - is the secret of its popularity, allowing it to build up a library of 20m tracks while providing a free platform for the music of up to 17,000 new bands in the past year.
Even if Time Warner/AOL and the Recording Industry Association of America succeed in closing it, two other sites have sprung up. Gnutella, and Freenet do not need host databases, so they are less vulnerable to legal action.
Not all musicians share the views of their paymasters. A spokesman for Radiohead said: "The band are quite flattered. Obviously, you have to be concerned how they [the music] were obtained, but the fact that they have turned up on Napster so early shows there is huge interest. Radiohead do not think that music on the net is the threat that the industry seems to think it is. It has all got a little heavy."
Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Cook, is even more relaxed. Napster's share-and-share-alike ethos fits perfectly with his left leaning politics.
Damian Harris, the boss of Fatboy Slim's Brighton-based label, Skint Records, said: "The amount of time companies spend stressing about getting a record on radio, you would think that the idea of some big global listening post would make perfect sense. I don't see why we can't all live in one big happy music sharing world."
Public Enemy are also fervent proponents of what they call "free music". There was less idealism in the Smashing Pumpkins' decision to embrace Napster. Unhappy with how they see the industry sacrificing real content for "bland, packaged" Britney Spears-type pop, they put it in on the net as a dramatic gesture "to a record label that didn't give us the support we deserved".
Shirley Manson, of Garbage is, with Metallica, Alanis Morissette, Elton John and Paul McCartney, among the most vocal of Napster's opponents. She said: "It pisses me off that the entire world believes it's morally OK to rape musicians of their art and their livelihood.
"If it were Nike, do you think the establishment would sit back and allow it to happen?"
