After a heady dose of breathless anticipation, Radiohead is finally set to embark on their 2012 American concert tour beginning February 27 in Miami, Florida. Radiohead is touring behind its 2011 release ‘The King of Limbs.’ The album was digitally released last February to critical acclaim and Radiohead has kept a relatively low-profile on the touring front since the album’s debut. The upcoming tour will hit 13 US cities with indie rock band Other Lives providing opening support.

The 2012 Radiohead tour is the band’s first extensive American concert excursion since 2008 and fans have been enthusiastically greeting the band with sell outs at each stop along the way. ConcertTour.org wants to help a couple of lucky fans see the band weave their tapestry of sound when they hit the Scottrade Center in St Louis, Missouri on Friday, March 9, 2012.

So what is the catch you ask? Its pretty simple. We are looking to gather a few more followers for our Twitter feed and spread the word about this great promotion. To enter the drawing, simply join the ConcertTour.org Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/#!/concerttourorg) and retweet the exact message below by February 5 at 11:59 PM CST:

Follow @concerttourorg for a chance to win sold out Radiohead St Louis Tickets. Contest details at ConcertTour.org

That is it. We will draw one name at random for the pair of Radiohead tickets on February 6 and notify the lucky winner via Twitter. As an added bonus, by following us on Twitter you’ll be the first to know when your favorite bands are coming to town not to mention you’ll have the jump on any future ticket giveaways for the hottest concerts across the nation. This is what we like to refer to as a win-win-win proposition.

ConcertTour.org is in no way affiliated or endorsed by Radiohead, the Scottrade Center or any box office. Contests and giveaways are subject to all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules or regulations.

The lineup for this year’s Coachella Music Valley Music and Arts Festival was announced Tuesday, and the headliners are Radiohead, Black Keys and Dr. Dre. More commonly known simply as Coachella, this year’s festival will feature more than 125 bands over two weekends – the first time since the festival was founded that it has stretched over more than a single weekend. The shows will take place April 13-15 as well as the following weekend, April 20-22. If the number of headliners doesn’t seem to match with the number of days, it’s because every band will play both weekends.

But, just as it is every year, the headliners aren’t the only notable artists heading out to the desert of Indio, Calif., where the festival is held at the Empire Polo Club. The reunion of At The Drive-In is one of the biggest stories of the year. After a fairly unfriendly breakup at the height of their success in 2001, band members consistently went on record as saying a reunion was unlikely, but the band wrote a Tweet Monday, preceding the Coachella announcement: “¡ ATTENTION ! To whom it may concern: AT THE DRIVE-IN will be breaking their 11 year silence THIS STATION IS…NOW…OPERATIONAL”

Though British band Pulp reunited last year for a series of festivals in the U.K., the Coachella dates mark the first 2012 dates for the band. Similarly, Jeff Mangum, the reclusive lead singer and songwriter for indie cult-superstars Neutral Milk Hotel, will play the festival, after playing a handful of smaller shows last year. Prior to those shows, Mangum rarely made appearances since 1998, the same year that Neutral Milk Hotel released the landmark indie album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

Other notable acts in the always eclectic lineup this year this year include Snoop Dogg, the Shins, Florence + the Machine, David Guetta, Arctic Monkeys and Jimmy Cliff.

Radiohead have announced the first North American dates of a 2012 tour to support The King of Limbs, the band’s most recent album.

The tour will consist of 10 dates and will begin in Miami on February 27, 2012 and will continue through March 15 when it will conclude in Glendale, Ariz. Indie rock band Other Lives will act as support for the tour. Other stops on the tour will include Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Texas and St. Louis.

The King of Limbs was released digitally on February 18 and in physical form the following month. Though the band has not toured in support of the record thus far, they have made several appearances, including performances on “The Colbert Report,” “Saturday Night Live,” and two shows at New York’s Roseland Ballroom in October.

The band also made a surprise appearance at this year’s Glastonbury Festival in June, where they played many of the songs from The King of Limbs. Additionally, they taped a live performance for the television series From the Basement in which they performed every song from the new album as well as a non-album track called “The Daily Mail.”

Radiohead became known for innovative album release methods when they released their 2007 album In Rainbows under a “name your price” payment system as a digital download on the band’s website. The King of Limbs continued this innovation.

In addition to the aforementioned digital and physical release, the band also released The King of Limbs as a “newspaper edition” in May 2011. In addition to the physical CD, the packaging included a multitude of various pieces of paper containing poems and other art works by the band. The designer said he wanted the packaging to give the feel of a hard to hold Sunday paper.

Frontman Thom Yorke confirmed Radiohead will be on tour in 2012. To date, the band has performed just one live show this year at Glastonbury in June to support “The King Of Limbs,” their new album. Yorke confirmed with Giles Peterson during an interview on BBC Radio 1 that the band was going on tour. He said, the idea is we will be going out to play on and off throughout the year.
Earlier in the week, Radiohead announced that on September 28 and 29 they will be performing at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. They will also be appearing on “Saturday Night Live” while in New York.

Yorke’s comments were consistent with comments made in July by Philip Selway, Radiohead’s drummer, who said on BBC 6Music that their successful Glastonbury gig had helped to re-ignite the band’s passion for performing live. He said, it was exciting to do that. It felt like musically we have something more to offer, when he was asked if Radiohead was planning to perform more live gigs.

Radiohead’s singer also revealed that Clive Deamer from Portishead, who performed with them at Glastonbury, will be touring with the band.

In addition, Yorke discussed his plans for releasing a new album with his project Atoms For Peace with Flea, bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and producer Nigel Godrich. He indicated they were currently finishing the album.

Recently, Yorke performed a show in Cornwell during European Fish Fry festival.

Ticket details and tour dates for the upcoming Radiohead tour should be out by the latter part of this year.

Radiohead. Two nights at the Roseland Ballroom. Tickets? Well, good luck with that. The last time the band performed in the New York City area was three long years ago over in All Points West across the river. After it was announced that Radiohead would be in NYC this month for television appearances, rumors ran wild about how inevitably the band would have a performance outside a television studio.

Radiohead’s management announced that two shows for Radiohead have been confirmed for Roseland Ballroom in New York City for September 28 and September 29. On September 26, tickets will be going on sale at www.ticketmaster.com starting at 10:00 am. There is a limit of two tickets per household. Tickets can be picked up at will call on the night of the show starting and 6:30 pm. Ticket holders will be required to enter the venue immediately after receiving their tickets. None of the tickets will be distributed before the event.

Considering the band’s infrequent performances lately, the relatively small size of the venue and the undeniable magnificence of Radiohead, undoubtedly the tickets will be white hot. According to Twitter, Consequence of Sound has noted that Four Tet, in addition to fellow producers Pearson Sound, Falty DL and RocketNumberNine, will be opening the two shows. Pearson Sound and Four Tet both were participants in the remix series The King of Limbs. The shows now are up at Ticketmaster. In terms of Radiohead, of course money isn’t any object. However it appears that if you are lucky enough to be able to purchase tickets, they will cost $65 in addition to fees of $14.75.

With 2011 coming to an end and 2012 almost here, speculation about festival headliners for Coachella next year are already gaining momentum. Although we just said goodbye to Bestival, rumors from the music industry over who will be topping the bill at Coachella, one of the first big events on the musical calendar, are already making the rounds.

Hits Daily Double, a music trade publication, is inferring that No Doubt and Radiohead are locked in to be the event’s headliners next year, according to Consequence of Sound. The same source last year reported how The Rolling Stones had almost finalized a deal for headlining the event in 2010. However, rumor is still rumor.

Hits Daily Double said that although record revenues for rock has decreased, the concert business has been holding steady and increased in some cases, led by multi-decade career acts performing in stadiums and arenas. The same can be said for festivals that are high profile such as Coachella.

Radiohead has squashed rumors of a new album in the works. They stated that most of their recent work was used up on “The King of Limbs.” Ed O’Brien, the band’s guitarist said, when we start working on a new album, we usually start afresh. It’s nice putting a lid on this.

Within hours of “The King of Limbs” being released, fans started to exchange conspiracy theories. They suggested that Radiohead, after working in the studio for a year, must have more than eight tracks recorded. The theory of a sequel to “The King of Limbs” was started with the TKOL1 file name on some album preorders, in addition to the name of “Separator,” the album’s final track. These details inspired websites to cling to every clue of supposed new material from Radiohead.

However O’Brien has squelched the rumors of any follow-up. We have other songs we started and didn’t finish. But there isn’t seven or eight songs that are finished waiting to be released in the fall or now, O’Brien said to BBC 6 Music. When we made the album, we didn’t want it to be too long. About 40 minutes is a record’s optimum time.

However, Radiohead does have some new music headed our way. Tomorrow two songs are due out in celebration of Record Store Day. However the tracks aren’t harbingers, they are leftovers. O’Brien said, “The Butcher” came out of the session for “King of Limbs.” We recorded “Supercollider” during that time frame, however we finished it after the release of the album. We are releasing both of them in support of independent records stores. Record shops are an important place for people to come together and to choose the music they love. Anything we can do to help out during these tough times, we want to do.

On February 18, Radiohead released “The King of Limbs,” their eighth album, as a download. They were one day ahead of their previously announced schedule. On Monday, Radiohead announced the set and promised everyone who bought the record on their website would get the download for the full album on February 19. According to the representative for the band, they pushed the release date up because everything was ready. So why not?

The band will continue selling deluxe packaging and digital copies from their official website exclusively through March. On March 29 “The King of Limbs” will be released in download, 12 inch vinyl and standard CD versions from all the major digital retailers.

“The King of Limbs” contains eight tracks and is slightly over 37 minutes long. The band has moved even further away from standard song structures and rock guitars and into ambient psychedelia, slow paced ballads, and rhythm heavy, moody electronica. In recent years early versions of “Lotus Flower” and “Morning Mr. Magpie” have made it onto the set lists of the band.

In addition to Radiohead announcing the early release of their new set, they released a “Lotus Flower” music video as well. Garth Jennings directed the clip. The video features frontman Thom Yorke performing some very distinctive dancing.

On January 24 in Los Angeles, Radiohead will be playing a benefit gig to raise money for relief efforts to help the earthquake ravaged Haiti.

The show will take place at The Fonda’s Music Box Theatre, according to the website for the band. The capacity of The Fonda is around 1,300, which is a much smaller venue than the ones that typically the band plays in.

The band’s announcement states that tickets are going to be sold via an auction in order to raise the most amount of money possible.

The auction is currently underway and will run until Saturday January 23 at 11 a.m. PST. There is additional information available on the auction page for Ticketmaster.

The minimum bid, as of Thursday, was $225 for general admission tickets.

Ticketmaster states that all show proceeds, including fees for the tickets, will go to benefit the Oxfam America-Haiti Earthquake Response Fund, which is an international development and relief organization that seeks to create lasting solutions for injustice, hunger and poverty.

In terms of what could be expected from the show, Philip Selway, Radiohead’s drummer, wrote on their website that they were currently recording so the audience would be catching them on the fly, but if fans were up for that, they were too.

British musicians unite to claim ownership of their works – creative and financial – from record companies who hostage their material for good and unjustly reap future profits from licensing. They are taking a firm stand on the issue with the formation of the Featured Artist’s Coalition or the FAC.

In an official statement, the newly formed group which is comprised of some of Britain’s most popular acts such as Radiohead, Kaiser Chiefs and Kate Nash, will provide the platform to “give artists the voice they need to argue for greater control over their music.” In addition, Brian Message, who manages both Radiohead and Nash, said that the coalition’s cause will not only serve mainstream acts like his talents, but “all artists, young and old, well-known or not”, as the group’s main aim is to “drive overdue change through the industry in their interests and those of fans.”

Message also cites that the problem has taken a whole new route especially with the current advancements in information technology. “The digital landscape is changing fast and new deals are being struck all the time, but all too often without reference to the people who actually make the music,” he explains.

Change in the music business is indeed overdue, but that change is also presently unfolding with the wave of social networking websites providing artists – old or new, mainstream or indie – a haven where they can showcase their works via online streaming for the amusement and satisfaction of their fans, all for free. Rock alternative staples like Radiohead and Oasis have been doing it, with the former’s 2007 release, ‘In Rainbows’, premiering digitally and the latter’s upcoming release, ‘Dig Out Your Soul’, available for online streaming via the band’s MySpace page, weeks prior to its arrival in the market. In other words, several music acts have literally bypassed their record companies and took promotion and distribution matters into their own hands, or websites, for that matter.

FAC is specifically campaigning for modifications in existing laws that have created the unjust business atmosphere between artists and record labels. For musicians, this long-term practice not only robs them of their creative freedom but also of their right to “fair compensation”, especially “whenever their business partners receive an economic return from the exploitation of the artists’ work,” which is the case when record labels continue to earn a buttload from selling music rights, or the right to cover a particular song or to use it in other media such as TV shows, ads or movies. Such right, according to the coalition, should only be bestowed to the artist who conceived and birthed the song in the first place, and not to some company whose only contribution was to spread word about the material and multiply it for public consumption, a task which most artists can now manage without the help of a conglomerate.