Crimea giver

They're trying to suggest it's the dawn of a whole new model for the music industry, and so it may prove, but for now, Crimea's plan to give away its next album for free sounds slightly less than dawn of a new era and more of a stunt.

The idea is to reach "as many people as possible", says drummer Owen Hopkin, with those people, once enslaved, forming a hardcore of gig-going, t-shirt-buying, somehow-persuading-businesses-to-licence-music-ing fans:

"We want to harness the power of the internet. If it's on there for free we'll reach more people than the orthodox route of selling the record."

Well, perhaps. Although it doesn't automatically follow - after all, there are hundreds and hundreds of servers full of free music which remains untouched.

What's different with Crimea, though, is they have made the Top 40 under their own steam (or rather, that of Warners). The new approach is a novel way to try and get round having been dropped; its success will depend to a large extent on how much money the band is hoping to make with its music. But before anyone has downloaded a single free track, they've managed to generate a shedload of free publicity.