Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' 'Debuts' at Number One

'In Rainbows,' the first release by Radiohead on Dave Matthews' ATO label in the U.S., has debuted on the album charts at No. 1. While the band attaining the top spot for the first time since 2000's 'Kid A' is a newsworthy achievement in itself, it's all the more remarkable when you consider that the band had made the album available as a digital download in October on a pay-what-you-wish basis.

The British group's unorthodox music distribution scheme for the critically lauded 'In Rainbows' was scoffed at in many quarters. Yet since the album's official Jan. 1 release date, Radiohead have sold 121,000 hard copies of a record for which some fans paid a dollar or even less as a pre-release download. By some estimates, the album sold in the vicinity of a million copies in its three months as a digital release. This ultimately chart-topping strategy comes off as a sharp rebuke of the existing distribution model of the major labels Radiohead bypassed in the dissemination of their seventh album.
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