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Coldplay may have answered EMI's rumored hopes

by kferaday | July 5, 2008 at 01:32 am | 152 views | add comment

This may be good news for EMI but it may not be good music for other musicians. It may be that, like the film industry, the major labels scale back their activity even further, supporting just a few mega-selling bands and discarding the rest.

Despite a 66% drop from first week sales of 721,000 copies, Coldplay's fourth album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends retains the top spot on the Billboard 200, selling 249,000 copies in the album's second week of release. Billboard reported the chart placement Wednesday and noted album sales are down 7.66% in the last week while dropping 13.2% behind the same week totals from one year ago.

The album was released in the United Kingdom three weeks ago tomorrow, while it has only been out in the United States for two weeks. It debuted big in the UK, selling 302,000 copies in the first three days it was out and selling 500,000 copies after ten days. Sales in the U.S. over seven days are obviously larger than the UK figures, pointing to rumored hopes from the band's music label EMI that the album would provide a significant boost for the company during the summer and possibly the year.

I've had the album since it was released, reporting that very day about the packaging of a vinyl and CD copy together that seemed to hint EMI was aware that consumers listen to music more frequently on MP3 players even if they prefer vinyl copies for nostalgia or the entire experience. Two weeks at number is impressive in today's market and even though sales dropped 66%, 249,000 copies is a nice figure for one week. If continued rumors are true that the band will release another album within a year and a half, the future of EMI may be more and more based on the success of one band.