i love 'antiques roadshow ' on PBS - it looks like it is produced for about 12 bucks per episode, but i can't turn it off when i see it. if you aren't familiar with it, its a show where people bring in their old stuff to get it appraised. sometimes they find out they have a fake, but more often than not, some lady with a box full of silver baby spoons finds out she is sitting on a gold mine. it makes you want to run into your basement or attic and see if you still have that old doll house your grandma gave you because it might be worth a quarter million.

a couple days ago i decided what a piece of art is worth to me. radiohead, in a move that has the music industry a buzz , is releasing their newest album online - for whatever price you want to pay for it. that's right, you can pre-order it [until oct. 10th] and pay as much or as little [yes, you can pay nothing] as you like.

i was lucky enough to be one of a few thousand people who got a sneak peak of some of the new tunes they were working on when they did a small US tour last year. i always love to see what radiohead is up to. i'm intrigued with them. but while i think they are some of the most creative people making music right now, i honestly haven't listened to their latest albums that much. 'kid a' and 'hail the the theif' are great albums, but i seldom find myself in the mood for them.

so when this new disc comes out, i’m asking myself, 'what is it worth to me?' and again, if i am honest, it isn't worth the normal $15-20 that their albums and accompanying art work usually call for [although the art work is almost worth it.] that leaves me with two choices normally - pay the top dollar for a disc i will listen to a few times a year, or borrow a copy from a friend and pirate it. at this point, until i find out if i have another 'ok computer' on my hands, i don't want to pay that much - so do I gank it from a friend?

i can't tell you how many times i have heard someone rationalize pirating music with the line, 'i wouldn't have bought that disc anyway.' really what they are saying is, that disc isn't worth the price the record label has put on it. but what if it was half that price? or a quarter? would you pay for it then?

until now we haven't been allowed to make that call. until now we have been able to hide behind high prices for discs as rational for stealing music [as poor as that rational may be.] in rainbows changes all of that, at least for this disc.

the question of personal integrity is put back at the for front for all those who have long ago resigned themselves to the fact that they don't mind doing illegal things with music. ok, maybe the disc isn't worth $20 to you, but is it worth $10....how about $5? is music really worth nothing to you? how about your integrity? does that have a dollar figure attached to it?

and herein lies the genius of radiohead - in a time where writing protest songs seems overplayed and few people really stop to consider the depth of the music they are listening to - they step in and create an album of moral inquiry without a single note haven yet been released.

that's priceless.