Radiohead Wraps Up Web-Release Experiment

In Rainbows will go on sale Jan. 1 as a physical CD, more than two months after it was released to consumers on the Web for whatever they wanted to pay.

Radiohead may have shaken up traditional channels for music distribution with the Web-only release of In Rainbows this fall, but after months of name-your-own-price downloads, the album is finally hitting plastic. The physical version of the album will go on sale Jan. 1, with a list price of $13.88, according to Amazon.com.

To coincide with the launch, the band will stream “some songs and other bits” from Radiohead.tv on New Year’s Eve (UK time). Lead singer Thom Yorke called it “a wee celebration of the release of the physical manifestation of In Rainbows” on the band’s Web site.

On Oct. 10, Radiohead released In Rainbows as a set of DRM-free MP3s that could be downloaded from the band at any price, including for free. Sadly, the experimental download model shut down after two months of operation on Dec. 10, most likely to make way for the conventional release.