Los Angeles - Apple (NASD: AAPL) has provided some details of the top-selling albums and songs of the year at its iTunes Store, revealing that Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" album and Leona Lewis' song "Bleeding Love" were the most popular downloads of 2008, the Associated Press reported.

London - Major record label EMI said this week that its roster act Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" has claimed the U.S. record for best-selling digital album ever, having sold 394,000 downloads in its first three weeks on sale. The album also broke the record for first-week digital album download sales in the U.S., with 288,000.

A few months ago we posted a list of the top 10 band / artist searches sending traffic to MySpace, the primary destination of searches for new artists. We’ve decided to expand the list to cover our whole Social Networking and Forums category, which includes the likes of Facebook and Bebo as well as YouTube (the fourth most popular destination for new artist searches after the MySpace, the band’s homepage and Wikipedia). So, here is a list of the hottest bands in the UK during June, based on the top 50 band / artist searches sending traffic to our Social Networking and Forums category (with their May position in brackets).

Los Angeles - Coldplay's new album "Viva la Vida or Death And All His Friends" sold 288,000 digital copies in its first week in the U.S., some 275,000 of which are thought to have been sold at Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iTunes Store -- breaking the retailer's pre-sale and first-week sales records, Digital Music News reported. Nearly 40% of the 721,000 total albums sold were digital copies.

Last week we issued a news release titled Coldplay's Free Single Propels Website to #1 Online Among Bands and Artists. We found that U.S. visits to Coldplay.com increased 19 fold on the back of the band's new single, Violet Hill, being released for free online. On April 29, 2008, the day the single was released on Coldplay.com, the website ranked as the most visited website among the Bands and Artists category. A little more than 1 out of every 40 visits to Bands and Artists category went to Coldplay's website that day.

London - Major label EMI said on Tuesday that the new Coldplay single it began offering as a free download for a week as of yesterday has already been downloaded more than 600,000 times, Billboard reports. The DRM-free song will no longer be available as a free download as of May 6.