New Coldplay album leak spurs stream on MySpace

It is still over a week and a half until Coldplay's fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, is scheduled for release, but the album leaked online through a torrent Wednesday. The band's first album in just over three years has already proved itself popular with a highly downloaded single and has become the highest pre-sale album ever in Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes Store, according to NME.

Prefix magazine speculates that the album's leak has raised serious issues for the band's label, privately-held EMI. Prefix reports that the albums second single, title track "Viva la Vida" has seen 510,000 downloads already, not as impressive as the two million its predecessor "Violet Hill" moved. The magazine also speculates that the leak will make it "unlikely that the album will be the rousing success that EMI had hoped." This just seems to disregard the consumer base and the band's large fanbase.

Arguably, the 510,000 downloads of "Viva la Vida" should be interpreted as that many presale downloads for the album, since the single and album pre-order are bundled together in iTunes. If that is the case, first week sales will be an impressive, rousing success. Coldplay and EMI have taken the next logical, and predictable, step to combat the online leak. NME reports that starting tonight the album will be available for streaming from the band's MySpace page.