Elisa Bray: Caught in the Net

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Dirty Pretty Things' Carl Barât may have been forbidden by his manager Alan McGee from doing a Radiohead-style album giveaway, but The Charlatans are following the trend by releasing their 10th studio album as a free download. You Cross My Path will be available from XFM's website xfm.co.uk and the band's website thecharlatans.net from 3 March, two and a half months before it hits the shops. Tim Burgess (right) and co are the first major British band to follow Radiohead's lead, but they're doing so without even hinting that fans pay for the album. The single "Oh Vanity" is being released as a free download a week earlier, on 25 February. More than 100,000 people downloaded the first album's single, the title track, for free in October.

Elsewhere, free music comes from the indie label One Little Indian, home to Björk, which is giving away Flavours, a 12-track compilation album of their artists, to download on emusic.com. The compilation showcases the label's discoveries from last year and its hopes for 2008. The offer, which lasts only until Monday, gets you tracks by Asobi Seksu, Land of Talk, Jesse Malin, Levy and Anti Atlas, the two-man chill-out project of producer and Radiohead manager Chris Hufford and classically trained composer Ned Bigham. Don't delay.

Fans of Tindersticks will be pleased to hear that the band are back with a new line-up and their first new album in almost five years, The Hungry Saw, out on 28 April. The band have set up a MySpace page and are offering the track "The Flicker of a Little Girl" as a free download MP3. See http://www.myspace.com/tindersticksofficial.

One lucky band won't be needing a record label to get themselves a slot at a music festival this year. The site Amazingtunes, which allows unsigned bands to sell tracks online, this week launched a competition for unsigned bands to win a slot on Xfm's Xposure stage at the Rock Ness festival, as well as airplay on the radio station. To win Sound 08, bands can upload an unlimited number of tracks on to amazingtunes.com before the end of February. The judging panel will draw up a shortlist of 20 bands, to be announced on 3 March. Voting is then opened up to fans, who can vote once a day until 20 March. The winning band will be announced on 25 March.

Lightspeed Champion has been nominated for an NME award for his blog at www.lightspeedchampion.com. In it, he talks about putting together his supergroup Pun Lovin' Criminals, comprising Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner and members of bands including Semifinalists and Ipso Facto, to play a recent gig of covers at London club night White Heat.