The Eagles’ new album, “Long Road Out of Eden,” takes the No. 1 spot on The Billboard 200 after Billboard revised a significant chart policy today.

Billboard will now allow exclusive album titles that are only available through one retailer to appear on The Billboard 200 and other charts, effective with this week’s charts.

According to Wal-Mart, The Eagles ‘The Long Road Out of Eden’ sold 707,253. These sales represented the highest first week sales of any music product in the past two years at Wal-Mart. This sold twice as much as Britney’s Blackout. Britney Spears’ new album, “Blackout,” which would have been No. 1 had the Eagles’ data not been reported, will open at No. 2 with first-week sales of only 290,000 copies. Based on projections, the Blackout album was expected to sell 350,000.

Britney’s Blackout: “Blackout,” will finish at No. 1 this week, according the chartmakers. “Blackout” sold between 325,000 and 350,000 copies and remains the No. 1 downloaded album on iTunes and the fifth bestselling CD on Amazon.com.

What is interesting today is that the charts are less relevant. The Eagles‘ latest double CD album, ‘Long Road Out Of Eden‘, will sell more than twice as much as Britney’s Blackout. The Eagles album is only available at Wal-Mart retailers and is expected to sell 700k+. The Eagles new record is not elgible for the Billboard Album chart because its being carried by a single retailer.

Prince attacks fansites: Prince and his lawyers are sending out legal letters to ‘Prince’ fan sites asking them for compensation. Is this the new artist business model? Giving away music for free in a weekly newspaper and generate revenue from fansites?

The letter reads…

Prince’s representatives have requested that the fansites provide them with “substantive details of the means by which you [the fansites] propose to compensate our clients [Paisley Park Enterprises, NPG Records and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG)] for damages…” (Read more here)

American Idol will undergo some changes in its 7th season: This season will feature fewer celebrity mentors and the contestants will be now allowed to show off their instrumental talent. (More here…)

Check out Feist flawlessly perform “1234” on SNL.

Most Radiohead fans are choosing to download the newest album without paying for it, according to researcher ComScore Inc.

Fewer than four out of 10 fans worldwide who downloaded ‘In Rainbows’ between Oct. 10 and Oct. 29 purchased it, paying $6 on average, ComScore said today in a statement.

In the U.S., 40 percent of Radiohead fans who downloaded ‘In Rainbows’ paid an average $8.05. Outside the US, 36 percent paid for the digital recording at an average price of $4.64. (Bloomberg)

The Bottom Line: Most fans paid $0 for the Radiohead album.

Jewels new album was produced by Big & Rich’s John Rich and will be released through Valory Music Company. “She’s just one of the best singer/songwriters in any genre,” Borchetta says, adding that a move to country is “a natural progression for her.”

20th Century Fox, has lifted its ban on the use of Universal Music Group content. The band was viewed as retaliation against a the lawsuit lodged by Universal against MySpace, also owned by News Corp. (WSJ)

CMT orders Reality Show: CMT has purchased episodes of “Can You Duet?,” a new reality competition show from “American Idol” producer FremantleMedia. “We’ve been looking to get into the music competition game, but we really wanted to do it correctly,” said CMT head of development Bob Kusbit. The producers are working to find a record label to sign the show’s winners. (Variety)

B-Unique, the British label home to Kaiser Chiefs and Primal Scream, has struck a deal with Warner Music U.K. that it will become integrated into Atlantic Records UK. B-Unique will also establish a artist management division. (Billboard)

San Diego based alt act We Shot The Moon who features Jonathan Jones the singer of the band Waking Ashland have signed to the Militia Group.

I really believe Britney Spears ‘Blackout’ possibly debuting 350k is a cultural defining moment. Shockingly, her first week numbers are rather good. If Britney came out 7-10 years earlier, she very well have could been a Debbie Gibson or Tiffany posing for playboy, raising a family outside of Hollywood, and appearing on VH1’s “Where Are They Now”.

The Media couldn’t capture Gibson’s and Tiffany’s most private moments and their private lives were not exploited in magazines and on the TV. I remember watching the video ‘Only In My Dreams‘, and I only remember Debbie Gibson as a 16 year old girl riding on a merry go round and dancing behind a white picket fence. I never had the opportunity to see the other side of Gibson. Never saw a video on TMZ with her face buried in coke.

How is the public still concerned with a 15 year old prepubescent girl dancing in high school proclaiming “Hit Me Baby One More Time”? Without question, this is a case when the stars align for an artist. Britneys success came on the heels of a changing society. New technology and globalization was right around the corner. Britney had another chance for fame unlike Gibson and Tiffany. We no longer have to walk to the stage when living in a surveillant society because the world is the stage. It’s Lights, Camera, Action every day, every minute, and every second. Britney’s fame was propelled through a 24 hour rolling camera and she gave it her all. Gibson at her age would have done the same thing granted she was given the opportunity.

Living in today’s world makes it more difficult to ‘imagine’. We can no longer just know Britney as the little prepubescent pigtailed girl performing those cute little dance moves like we did with Debbie Gibson. In fact, we know more than we need to know about Britney and this is why she can sell records a decade later. What we have today is a ‘aftermarket’ that has allowed these former teen pop stars to grow and maintain relevance.

Unfortunately, the music itself has become just a dog and pony show. I truly believe Britney’s new record Blackout is a defining moment because we can see the degradation of music and the craft.

I found this review and believe this is an accurate description of what took place.

Her record company would no doubt like us to consider this album a bold assertion of Spears’ identity and, by extension, relative sanity. “Crazy” is acceptable in pop, clinically insane is not. But the self-consciously stylish tin-can beats on “Blackout,” referencing every ’80s synth phenom from Trio to Berlin and smothered with vocal tics cribbed from Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, actually testify to Spears’ absence, and point to the irrelevance of her modest contribution to the process of building her brand. With so many hot producers competing with one another, what you hear on “Blackout” are not songs so much as commercials for songs — a team of professional songwriters frantically overselling and spinning the image of a celebrity who has essentially left the building. (salon)

I believe that we hit the pinnacle. Maybe the next generation of artists will come back around and proclaim “I want to make a record and I have to be really GREAT…..