Radiohead asked fans: “How much is our new album worth?” when they released their record as an “honesty box” download. The answer appears to be £7.99 after In Rainbows made a surprise appearance on the iTunes digital store.

One of the last important bands not to allow their music to be sold through iTunes, Radiohead have now agreed a deal with the Apple computer giant to release their new material. The deal comes two months after they shocked the record industry by leaving EMI and asking their fans to pay whatever they wanted to download their long-awaited new record.

Radiohead refused to release figures for the experiment and denied industry reports that 1.3 million people had taken up the offer, paying an average of £4. The band did confirm that 15 fans had paid the maximum £99.99. Many more, including Thom Yorke, Raidohead’s lead singer, elected to pay nothing.

Controversially, tracks from In Rainbows can be bought at the standard iTunes price of 79p. Radiohead were one of several bands unhappy that their albums, which they intended to be heard as a body of work, could be sold piecemeal.

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At the band’s insistence, their iTunes tracks are in a higher audio quality than most files on the store. The tracks are also free from copying restrictions, so they can be played on almost any digital device and shared on the web. The full album comes with a free podcast and a 15-page digital “booklet”.

Radiohead cut a deal with iTunes after leaving EMI, their long-term record company, in acrimonious circumstances. The group received no payment for digital downloads under their EMI contract. Yorke said: “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together.”

Last year Led Zeppelin added their hits to the iTunes catalogue. The solo works of Paul McCartney and John Lennon are also available and a deal to offer the Beatles catalogue through the store is expected this year.

Radiohead, from Oxford, have released In Rainbows as a CD this week, saying that they wanted to see it in the city’s branch of Sainsbury’s. They are on course to top the album chart with first-week sales of 50,000 copies. They have also sold 80,000 boxed sets, with extra tracks, at £40 each.

The band have licensed their music to the online stores 7 Digital and ateaseweb.com, which is releasing In Rainbows as 320kbps MP3 files. This means audio quality will be twice as high as most tracks sold on iTunes .

Yorke used Radiohead’s blog to respond to a report in The Times that the band’s demands for renewing their EMI contract would have cost the company £10 million. He denied that they were seeking a large cash advance and criticised EMI, now under the control of Terra Firma, a private equity company, for “airing [its] dirty laundry in public”. The band had been seeking to regain control of their hit recordings from EMI, a demand that the label refused to discuss.

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