After I bought "In Rainbows" upon its digital release I wondered who in their right mind would buy the physical album considering they already had the opportunity to get the record for free.

Well, it turns out a lot of people were Jonesing for a tangible copy of the new Radiohead recording. Actually, 122,300 people wanted their Radiohead fix the first week the record was on shelves according to Soundscan numbers, helping "In Rainbows" debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts this week despite its pay-what-you-want release a few months back.

Since it worked so well for Radiohead, there is now speculation that Pearl Jam may ride the same name-your-own-price pony out of the gates for its ninth studio record.

This is something that could work well for the band and possibly work much better than Radiohead's maiden voyage into the consumer-driven price realm.

Consider that at one point and time Pearl Jam was the biggest band in the world, way bigger than Radiohead has ever been or currently is, and that consumers are now familiar with being able to name their own prices thanks to Radiohead, and Pearl Jam could do extremely well with this sales model.

Also the "bootlegs" the band was offering of live shows sold thousands of copies in their download-only format. Plus, if the download scheme doesn't work there's still that distribution contract with Clive Davis' J Records to fall back on, so Pearl Jam really wouldn't be risking much.

Logic tells one that if Radiohead could pull it off and still have a No. 1 record on the charts then certainly Eddie, Mike, Stone, Jeff and Matt could do it successfully.