Promotion gold at end of In Rainbows.

Retailers have widely backed the ground-breaking release strategy for Radiohead's new album, despite In Rainbows last week struggling to match the first-week sales of its predecessor Hail To The Thief.

The new album, whose conventional debut last Monday followed its availability last year as a name-your-price download and as a deluxe boxed set, had clocked up sales of around 30,000 units by the end of last Thursday, just 6,000 ahead of Take That's Beautiful World. The 2003-issued Hail To The Thief reached 114,000 sales in the UK by the end of its first week.

How In Rainbows has performed since its release through XL last week will help the industry to judge whether Radiohead and their management company Courtyard's bold experiment has been a success. However, there are other factors to take into consideration, including the band claiming to have sold between 60,000 and 80,000 copies worldwide of the boxed set, prior to the basic album's physical release.

Although the album has been available for a number of weeks as a download and within the boxed set, HMV product director Gary Warren says that In Rainbows is generating "a lot of interest" among customers, "which is no surprise when you consider how much profile it's received".

And he explains that the unconventional method of release has helped HMV to promote the album.