The Radiohead box set, which includes the studio albums, Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail To The Chief, plus the I Might Be Wrong live album will drop on December 10. The package, which includes original artwork on digipack sleeves, can be pre-ordered at radioheadstore.com.

But ordering the CD box set is only one way to relive the band’s past. Fans can also purchase a limited edition Radiohead USB stick containing CD quality wav files of all the music plus the digital artwork available in CD form.

EMI says this is the first time a major band has ever sold its catalog on a USB stick, which will be in the shape of the Radiohead “bear.”

Of course, along with CD and stick, you can also download the tracks directly to your computer on December 10 in what EMI refers to as a “digital bundle.”

“We are delighted to offer new and existing fans the chance to get Radiohead’s albums in a box set,” Parlophone Managing Director Miles Leonard said. “We are particularly excited about the USB stick, which gives fans an easy and portable way to carry the box set and provides another way of bridging the world between on-line and off-line content.”

Meanwhile, a company that tracks Net usage reports that when it came to paying for Radiohead’s new album or getting it for free, most fans opted for paying nada.

It was only a few weeks ago when Radiohead shook up the music industry by announcing that its latest album, In Rainbows, would be sold as digital downloads and that fans could decide how much they wanted to pay for the new music. Fans could name any price they wanted, including zero if they so desired.

Well, guess what? It appears that the majority of fans downloading the new album did so for free.

The numbers come from comScore, which based its findings on 2 million Netizens which gave the research company permission to monitor their Internet activities.

ComScore’s reports that 2 out of 5 Radiohead downloaders agreed to pay for the new album. The study shows that out of 1.2 million people worldwide, 38 percent chose to pay while 62 percent chose the free option.

That only less than half of Radiohead’s fans chose to actually give the band some cash in return for the new music reminds one of the anonymous record label executive back in the early days of the original Napster who asked somewhat rhetorically, “How can we compete with free?”

According to ComScore’s numbers, it looks like labels and artists do not yet know the answer to that one.