Music Ally

EMI Music claims that Coldplay’s new album `Viva La Vida’ is now the biggest ever paid album download, having shifted 394.000 digital copies in the last three weeks (this is based on Nielsen Soundscan figures in the US). That’s a big chunk of the overall 1.1 million sales too - bolstered by the band’s digital promotions in the run-up to its release with iTunes.

After the recent upheavals and ongoing job cuts, EMI staff can at least dance about in joy counting sales of the new Coldplay album, which shifted 721,000 copies in the US alone in its first week. 288,000 of those were digital sales- an impressive 39.9%. It’s thought that iTunes may have contributed as much as 275,000 of those, and Apple has confirmed that Viva la Vida or Death And All His Friends has smashed its pre-sale and first-week digital album sale records. Meanwhile, digital sales of the band’s previous album X&Y increased by a factor of 40, helped by price promotions on etailers such as Amazon’s MP3 Store

Analysis from web metrics firm Hitwise indicates that Radiohead were more successful than Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay at attracting and then maintaining traffic following their recent album promotions/giveaways. Radiohead’s website saw a bigger spike around the release of In Rainbows than the other bands saw around (more…)

Coldplay’s free download ‘Violet Hill’ Coldplay has apparently been downloaded 600,000 in 24 hours according to EMI, which has already dubbed the trial a ‘huge success’. The DRM-free track will only be available until it goes on sale as a paid download on May 6. Did nobody tell Chris Martin that Thom Yorke (more…)