Brian Message says the new Radiohead album is out in June

Brian Message, a partner in Courtyard Management, Radiohead's management company, told about 30 people at the Wanstead Tap in east London on Thursday night that the band's new album is coming out in June. The venue, a cafe, craft beer shop and events space, tweeted the remark that night, and by Friday it was being reported around the world as the release date of the ninth album, the first since The King of Limbs in 2011.

Much of his talk was about ticket touts. For the European tour, which sold out within minutes when it went on sale in March, the band limited tickets to two per buyer, with the buyer's name on each ticket and ID checked at the door. Even so, Message says, Viagogo got hold of 19 tickets for each of the three Roundhouse nights in London at the end of May and has sold them on at £1,000 each. He expects a Viagogo employee to walk in with someone posing as a friend. The next step would be one ticket per transaction, which he admits would make for a strange gig, 3,000 people in one room, all on their own.

He would not give the album's title, but he did describe it. There's nothing out there right now that sounds anything like this. And for some people that will be a good thing and for others that probably won't.¹ No decision has been made on putting it on Spotify and the other streaming services. Message hopes it will go there, and says he prays every night that it does. He puts the objections of Thom Yorke, who once called Spotify “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse”, down to how far streaming has fallen short. There should be more than 200 million paying subscribers, Message says, and there are fewer than 100 million.

On Friday the band's publicist sent out a statement saying Message is not Radiohead's manager. Radiohead are managed by Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge. He is a partner in Courtyard Management with no operational role, it says, and nothing he said when asked about new music at an industry event the night before should be taken as coming from the band's management or as official.