So I'm not a huge fan of Radiohead, but I love what they did late last year by allowing fans to buy their latest album, "In Rainbows," digitally from their Web site for whatever price they felt was deserved. (I supported it by purchasing the album at the time.) Well, this week, the album was released traditionally, and in this case, a good deed was rewarded:
Whatever the price, Radiohead's "In Rainbows" is a top-seller. The band's seventh album was No. 1 on the week's music charts with sales of 122,000 copies, according Nielsen SoundScan figures released Wednesday. The physical, standard priced release sold fairly well even though Radiohead three months ago made a digital copy of the disc available for download on its Web site with optional pricing.
Radiohead has declined to announce how many copies it sold or how much money it made from the digital release, but many in the music industry wondered how it would affect the sales of the physical copy.
The list price of the hardcopy of "In Rainbows" is $13.98. For the digital release, which was downloadable in a sound quality less than that of CD, fans could pay whatever they wanted, or nothing at all (The download was removed from the band's Web site before the Jan. 1 release).