On the music side of things, nothing came as more of a surprise than this morning's announcement that Radiohead will be releasing the digital version of their latest album, The King of Limbs, on Saturday, February 19th. As in this Saturday. Radiohead is accepting preorders for both digital copies as well as a packaged version they are coining as the world's first "Newspaper Album".

The 320K MP3 version is going to run you $9, but they are also offering a $14 WAV version if uncompressed is more to your liking. The "Newspaper Album" comes with two LPs, a CD, several pieces of artwork (several sheets of large artwork, 625 small pieces, and plastic to hold it together) in addition to a digital copy of the album. It will be priced at either $48 or $53 depending on which digital format you choose and will ship on May 9th. They will likewise have access to the digital copy on Saturday.

Not only is it amazing that Radiohead managed to keep this album a secret, but it seems to have reversed a precedent in the band's history. In Rainbows, the band's previous album, pioneered a pay-what-you- will-model while the new album is utilizing a more traditional fixed price model. I thought this may be a sign that the former model was not all that profitable. But my co-host extraordinaire, Abe, pointed out that maybe the name your price model was more of market research to see what the average price fans were willing to pay. I can see that, but then again who knows.

I'm pretty excited about this new album and will at the very least be pre-ordering the digital copy some time this week, but I'm also curious to hear what you guys think.