Three weeks early, Kid A turns up whole on Napster

The whole of Kid A is on Napster, three weeks before it reaches the shops (2 October in Britain on Parlophone, a day later in America on Capitol). Fans spent Tuesday emailing nme.com to say they had it, and the fan site At Ease said the same.

Few if any national critics in Britain had a copy by Tuesday, and they were not due one until mid-September. The few writers and fans who have heard Kid A did so at special playbacks, once through, on personal headphones controlled remotely.

The new songs themselves have been on Napster since the summer. The first night of the tour, in Arles on 13 June, was posted in full within three days, all seven new songs included. All the new songs will appear tomorrow on the Internet anyway⁴, Thom Yorke told the crowd that night. In July Colin Greenwood went on Newsnight to tell bands and labels to embrace file-sharing.

In Canada the station XFM came by a digital copy of “Optimistic” and played it before the song had gone to radio. EMI served it a cease and desist notice telling it to wait for the official radio release, and XFM stopped. According to NME, the row put a colour photograph of the band on the front page of the Vancouver Sun. David Hawkes, the station's director of marketing and artist relations, told the Vancouver Province that six months before release the play would have meant trouble, but two weeks before it the storm was a small one, and EMI ought to be pleased. We've created more of a splash for the upcoming Radiohead release than they have.²