Apparently U2 have lost a rough cut of their forthcoming album at a photo shoot. It’s not the first time this has happened: Pop leaked on the Web a few months before its release, rough recordings for Achtung Baby were nicked from the studio a few years before that, and something in the back of my mind tells me they lost demos or rough cuts in the early 80s too.

Inevitably, everyone’s worried that it’ll end up on the Web like the last few Radiohead albums, whose web leaks generated, er, months of publicity and, er, rocketed the albums to the top of the charts on the day of release. But of course, records don’t get leaked to the Web deliberately and only a cynic would suggest otherwise.