Two of the biggest releases of 2007 will not be getting any glory at next year's Brit Awards because they won't be eligible. They won't be eligible because in order to appear on the long list for the best artist, album and single categories that the Brit Academy vote on you need to have had a Top 75 album or single in the last sixteen months.
That means that Prince, who controversially released his new album 'Planet Earth' in the UK as a freebie covermount with the Mail On Sunday, and Radiohead, who self-released new album 'In Rainbows' via their own (non-chart returning) website, won't appear on any shortlists because while both albums had mass distribution neither charted.
None of this is a surprise really - the Brit Award rules aren't a secret or anything - but everyone else seems to be reporting on this fact, so we thought we should too. Prince could, of course, be nominated for the Best Live Act for his much hyped O2 residency, because that category is shortlisted by a special committee of live music types and not constrained by the chart eligibility rule.