Heartland

Help Portishead release their next album

The trip-hop titans are asking fans to suggest how they should distribute their music. By the way, they've already ruled out doing a Radiohead and giving it away for free

Portishead are free! And looking for ideas on how to release their next album.

The band have announced on their MySpace blog that they are "free of a deal" and "free of commitment", following the release of last year's Third, their first studio album in 11 years. The band have completed their contract for Universal Music subsidiary Island Records and find themselves "discussing the future of P", they said. They have already promised to release a fourth album, and that it will take less than 11 years to make.

"With the world being the way it is there are lots of options open," Geoff Barrow wrote. "But if you lot have any bright ideas of how we should sell our music in the future lets us know."

There are indeed a number of options. Portishead could follow the tried and tested route of signing to a different major label. They could follow the Sonic Youth model and sign to a smaller, independent label. They could self-release their album – perhaps on Barrow's own Invada label. Or they could do as Radiohead did and give it away for free.

Oh wait, no they couldn't. "I don't think that we're into giving out music away for free to be honest," Barrow wrote on MySpace. "It fuckin' takes ages to write and we have to heat our swimming pools!"