It’s going to be awfully hard to say “Arcade Fire” and “indie” in the same breath from now on, because the first major revelation from this Billboard article about the promo effort for Neon Bible is that the album sold 92,000 copies in its first week of release, good for—get this—#2 on the Billboard 200. That’s not #2 on the Heatseekers chart or the Independent Albums chart; this is the granddaddy, the original, the one with Justin Timberlake and Fergie and those people. The Arcade Fire aren’t platinum artists—they’re already down to #18 this week, and will undoubtedly drop off fairly soon—but this has to be some sort of victory for whatever internet phenomenon you want to credit for the band’s popularity.

But much more interesting and surprising is what Merge has had to do to promote Neon Bible, an album that could sell more than the rest of Merge’s 2007 lineup combined. What happens when a medium-sized indie label has to start thinking about massive national marketing campaigns? Apparently it’s like teaching a very smart new dog old tricks, because reading quotes from Merge people about trying to convince the Arcade Fire to do ringtones or pushing for placement in Circuit City and Best Buy flyers, you’d think they’d been doing this sort of thing for years. I mean, not that anyone necessarily had any grand illusions about the likes of Merge and Matador operating out of some hipster-utopian warehouse loft in the slightly scuzzy part of town where all the cheap pubs are, but you do have to wonder if someone like Slim Moon of Kill Rock Stars has any desire to start selling ringtones of old Sleater-Kinney songs.