Last month, Radiohead made its new release, "In Rainbows", available for download and allowed fans to choose their own price. Although the album was virtually free, "In Rainbows" was the most illegally-downloaded album in its first week of release. Now, a study by comScore Inc. has been released that claims that roughly 38% of those who downloaded the album actually paid for it - an average of $6 per purchase. Much has been made of these figures in the mainstream and Internet press with many suggesting that the "pay-what-you-want" model was a failure for Radiohead. Far from it.

The "In Rainbows" website has had roughly 1.2 million visitors (you'll notice that almost every other blog is reporting this number as the amount of downloads - erroneous!) since the release of the album. Let's be conservative and assume that 50% of those visitors downloaded the album - 600,000. We'll then take 38% of these people and get an idea of how many actually paid - 228,000 purchases. Multiply that times the average price of the album ($6), and you get just about $1.37 million made by the band in a month. By the industry standard of $1 an album going to the artist, it's very clear that Radiohead came out ahead of their peers financially.

These are all imaginary figures but they illustrate the fact that "In Rainbows" would had to have gone platinum-plus in its first month in order to bring in the same amount of money for the band. In this day and age, that would not have happened through brick-and-mortar physical sales. This musical revolution may be starting off on some wobbly legs but, with "In Rainbows" and "NiggyTardust" leading the way, who knows? One thing is for sure: The major labels are going to have to adapt and accomodate in order to maintain anything resembling a bottom line. The gauntlet has been thrown down.

[Note: Radiohead denies the figures claimed by comScore Inc. regarding the online sales of "In Rainbows" as well as the average price per user. A spokesperson for the band told BBC News that the numbers were "not for public consumption" due to the fact that "people were still downloading [the album] - Editor]

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