Coldplay album debuts big in the UK, maybe EMI has hope yet

British band Coldplay's fourth album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends debuted with impressive sales over the weekend, taking the first place position in the UK sales chart based on 302,000 copies sold over only three days. Music newspaper NME also reported that the album's sales are more than the other top five albums combined in the UK. As previously reported though, that figure is still below the sales that its predecessor X&Y sold during its first week in 2005: over 464,000.

The album is released in the United States on Tuesday, and hopes are high that it can duplicate, if not, exceed those sales in the largest music market in the world. X&Y has sold over 3 million copies in the U.S. since it was released three years ago.

Numerous reports indicate that struggling music company EMI is hedging its entire summer and possibly the year on the release of Viva la Vida, even though the band seems to be downplaying the hopes that fuel industry executives: "This time, we were hungry to disassociate ourselves from anything other than improving someone's holiday or bath time." Coldplay's success in the last three days in the UK is no doubt highly prized by EMI and its current owners, private equity firm Terra Firma, after many high profile and selling artists have left the company in the last year.

Coldplay is by no means the only highly successful band under contract at EMI, but the pressure that seems placed on the band will no doubt have an effect on Viva la Vida's success and what happens in the U.S. charts this week.