We already know that the new Coldplay album will be going by the name of Viva La Vida. Now, we also know the ten tracks that will make up the album, which is due out on June 16th.

In a blog post on their official website, Coldplay have announced the official track listing, which is as follows:

‘Life In Technicolor’
‘Cemeteries Of London’
‘Lost!’
‘42′
‘Lovers In Japan/Reign Of Love’
‘Yes’
‘Viva La Vida’
‘Violet Hill’
‘Strawberry Swing’
‘Death And All His Friends’

What we’re actually meant to do with this knowledge once acquired is anyone’s guess. Without any samples being distributed, then it doesn’t actually mean anything.

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The Charlatans have announced that their new album You Cross My Path will be available as a free download from the Xfm.co.uk website for two months prior to getting a full physical release.

This will the long running British band’s tenth studio album, but first to go the way of digital downloads as it’s preferred choice of consumer delivery.

The album will be completely free to download from the Xfm website from March 3rd. On May 19th, a full two and half months later, the album will get a physical release on both CD and Vinyl formats in 33 countries. To encourage fans to buy the retail version, this will include a strictly limited deluxe edition vinyl 45’s box set of the LP.

The first single Oh Vanity! will also be available as a standalone free download, from February 25th.

The full track listing for the album is going to be:

‘Oh! Vanity’
‘Bad Days’
‘Mis-takes’
‘The Misbegotten’
‘A Day For Letting Go’
‘You Cross My Path’
‘Missing Beats (Of A Generation)’
‘My Name Is Despair’
‘Bird / Reprise’
‘This Is The End’

I know what you’re thinking? The same thing as everyone else in the blogosphere seems to, that The Charlatans are merely copying Radiohead, and hoping to receive as much publicity for the download offer as they did last year.

But, it seems that with a further bit of digging, you can clearly see that The Charlatans thought of it first, and Radiohead may have actually copied them in the first place.

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Leon Jackson has made it to the top of the charts, and thus continued the trend for X Factor winners grabbing the Christmas number one.

Leona Lewis is still sitting at number one in the album charts, making it a clean sweep for the ITV music reality television show.

Leon won The X Factor last Saturday, overcoming the odds, and the will of a huge swathe of the British public. Now, just 8 days later, his debut single is number one in the official UK single charts.

Having a Christmas number one is quite an honour in the UK, or at least it used to be before The X Factor came along, and in a moment of brilliance, decided to announce the winner the week before Christmas every year, thus ensuring the millions of people who have watched the contestant on the TV every week for months, rush out and buy their single at the earliest opportunity.

It means that normal singers and bands, who may have dreamed of one day having a Christmas number one, now haven’t got a hope in hell. Which is a shame. The only good outcome of it is that Cliff Richard now can’t get to number one at Christmas again… cheers all around.

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X Factor 2006 winner Leona Lewis has broken another record, this time for the fastest selling British début album of all time.

She already held one record previous to this week, after her debut single ‘A Moment Like This’ was downloaded 50,000 times in the first half hour of its release last December and sold 600,000 copies in its first week.

Her new album ‘Spirit’, sold 375,000 copies in its first week on sale, beating former record holders Arctic Monkeys by 12,000. They have held the record for over a year with ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’.

Lewis is now sitting at the top of both the singles and albums charts, and is set for a bit of a domination of the British charts in the run up to Christmas.

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The new Radiohead album has been recorded and mastered ready for release early next year, but more details than that have been hard to track down.

To give the fans some clues and to build the hype up ahead of the release, the British band have been leaving cryptic messages on their official website for the past week.

On the Hodiau Direkton part of the Dead Air Space website, visitors are treated to Radiohead hieroglyphs which contained messages such as “Yes we are still alive” and ” Blink your eyes one for yes two for no code code code”.

Well now, reportedly sooner than expected by Thom Yorke and co, the loyal fans have cracked the codes which may reveal the release date and some of the tracks included on the album.

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Last month Prince gave his brand new album ‘Planet Earth’ away with a British newspaper. To celebrate this, I held a contest where one lucky reader of Brit Music Scene could win a copy of the album.

The lucky winner was JM from that little country they call Australia, and I dispatched the album to her forthwith. She’s now had the opportunity to listen to the album and has kindly written a short review of it for us…

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Prince is American, always has been, always will be, I know this, you don’t need to tell me. So why then am I reviewing his new album Planet Earth on a British Music blog? Well, although I’ll be mainly covering British bands and singers, I reserve the right to occasionally review or talk about bands from other countries, especially if something they are doing has had a big impact on the British Music Scene. That is exactly what this album has done, causing debate around the world about the free give away of it with a Sunday newspaper. So let’s see if it’s actually worth paying for or is actually only fit as a freebie.

I’ve never really been a fan Of Prince although I respect him as a musician immensely. I thought the decision to break with the normal record business and give his album away free with a newspaper was a brave and bold move, which could result in a evolution of the music industry. I certianly don’t think he’ll be the last artist to do such a thing.

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We all know single sales have been dropping for a good while, and that to be Number 1 in the charts now takes a lot less effort now than 2 years ago. But it seems that album sales are dropping now too.

Album sales are down by 10% in the first half of 2007, according to the The British Phonographic Industry. That equates to 6.5 million less records sold this year than the same time last year. The industry has raked a little back by increasing digital album sales by 2 million, but that’s still quite a substantial drop.

Is this a cause for concern, for both retailers and consumers alike? The fewer albums get sold, the less money there is swilling around for the promotion and signing of new acts, which the British music industry needs to keep the momentum going.

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I love Art Brut. I felt I should say that before I start the album review so there’s no thoughts of a conflict of interest. I first heard of them in 2004 when ‘Formed a band’ and ‘Modern Art’ started being played on MTV2 and Radio 1. I remember ‘Emily Kane’ being released as a single and hearing snippets of their excellent first album. And then I kind of lost track of what they were up to until I saw them support Maximo Park earlier this year and the love affair was rekindled.

I love the idea of Art Brut, which is kind of just form a band, don’t think about it, just do it and see what happens. To this end, Art Brut have a lot of bands who say they formed as a result of their influence, and name themselves after the band as a kind of homage. They have names such as AB17 and AB4. American Indie rockers ‘We Are Scientists’ are actually an Art Brut franchise, AB47. Now there’s trivia for you!

I’ve been playing first album ‘Bang Bang, Rock and Roll’ on repeat over the last few months so I was uber excited to get hold of a copy of ‘It’s a bit complicated’. It didn’t disappoint, and even though on first listen I wasn’t totally grabbed, like all the best records it grows on you increasingly with each listen.

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