Coldplay have been making all the right headlines recently after they released the first single from their new album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, as a free music download. The track caused a stir and was enormous success, leading to presales of the album, which is released tomorrow, reaching record levels on iTunes.

There were two million free music downloads of the single “Violet Hill”, and HMV has said that it is ordering near record numbers of CDs to put on shelves for the big launch.

The real test for the album will be whether it can sustain this level of interest after the hype of free music downloads and snazzy marketing campaigns dies out. Industry experts are skeptical about how long the buzz will be around this new album, but we suspect that the cynics will be proved wrong in this case.

There probably aren’t many bands who could launch an album in this way, but for established industry artists, free music downloads can lead to increased sales.

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