Radiohead's first six albums go on sale on iTunes, song by song

Radiohead's first six albums went on sale on the iTunes Store this morning, from Pablo Honey to Hail to the Thief, as DRM-free files that can be bought a song at a time as well as by the album. EMI's new compilation The Best Of is there too.

Radiohead had held out because they wanted their records bought whole, and Apple would not sell anything on album-only terms, which is where things stood last year. Last September the UK shop 7digital began selling the albums as downloads, whole albums only.

The catalogue was recorded under the band's EMI contract, which ended in 2003. The Best Of is EMI's too, put together without the band's input. It came out yesterday in the UK on Parlophone and today in the US on Capitol, as a single CD, with a special edition adding a second disc and a DVD of videos.

Until today iTunes had just In Rainbows, which arrived earlier this year, and a handful of songs on soundtracks and compilations. Nielsen SoundScan counts 526,000 US sales of In Rainbows, 106,000 of them downloads, and another 178,000 of its songs bought one at a time.