It worked: Radiohead's "In Rainbows" is now the top-selling CD in the country

[Wondermonkey]

Radiohead Finds Sales, Even After Downloads


By JEFF LEEDS, NY Times

January 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES — In a twist for the music industry’s digital revolution, “In Rainbows,” the new Radiohead album that attracted wide attention when it was made available three months ago as a digital download for whatever price fans chose to pay, ranked as the top-selling album in the country this week after the CD version hit record shops and other retailers.

The album, the first in four years from the closely watched British rock act, sold 122,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That represents a mixed result for the band. It’s a sharp drop compared with the debut of Radiohead’s previous album, 2003’s “Hail to the Thief,” but it’s far from a flop, considering the steep decline in music sales in the last four years and the typically weak sales in the post-Christmas period. “Thief” sold about 300,000 in its first week in 2003.

In any case the figures challenge the conventional wisdom that music fans no longer have an affinity for plastic. The sales of the album, which also snagged the top spot on the British weekly music chart, came despite the fact that “In Rainbows” — in the form of digital files — had been acquired by many fans after the band offered it in an unconventional pay-what-you-want offering through a Web site, inrainbows.com. The album was released on plastic CDs and vinyl LPs on Jan. 1, with the CD priced at $13.98, though it could be found for as little as $7.99 at outlets like Amazon.com.

Whole NY Times story here.

[Peench]

Awesome! If I liked Radiohead I totally would have bought the CD to support their actions.

[namehater]

^^ no doubt!

hopefully they some other bands pick up on this

[Wondermonkey]

It basically goes against all the norm beliefs now too: users don't want CDs, digital is killing CDs, etc.

I mean, I think that still holds true, but when a band enters that clearly understands the market and refuses to cave in to large record labels, this can happen. Pretty brilliant.

The box set they released is pretty genius too, it came last week. I didn't used to care for their music until we saw them in concert. Now I actually dig them, although I'm not the one that bought the box set.

Go Radiohead.

[AlphaQ GehaD]

Awesome stuff man, I hope this is the future, because going to the CD store and not finding what you want is annoying, plus expensive. This way you know where to go and they will have the music because the artist puts it up and if they wanted they could work solo without a manager. GJ RADIOHEAD!


I think they should just have all the songs on the internet for you to listen to, then you could pay $5 and make a whole cd mix of whatever songs you wanted.