Coldplay's Free Single Propels Website to #1 Online Among Bands and Artists

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Coldplay's Free Single Propels Website to #1 Online Among Bands and Artists

U.S. visits increased 1,800 percent since Monday

NEW YORK, NY, May 1, 2008 - Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced that U.S. visits to Coldplay.com increased 1800 percent since the band's new single, Violet Hill, was released for free online. The increase is based on comparing the daily U.S visits for April 29, 2008 versus April 27, 2008.

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. Two days before the release of the single the website ranked number 305 among Bands and Artists websites from more than 500 websites in the category.

"While publishers become increasingly concerned about the cannibalization of their revenue stream, experiments by Coldplay and Radiohead, at a minimum, prove that free music downloads provide added publicity to increase awareness for album releases," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research, Hitwise.

Music - Bands and Artists Category Daily Market Share of U.S. Visits
Top 10 Rankings for the date of 04/29/2008
Rank	Website	Domain	Market Share
1	Coldplay	www.coldplay.com	2.53%
2	Def Leppard	www.defleppard.com	1.91%
3	The Clayboard	theclayboard.yuku.com	1.73%
4	Bill Gaither	www.gaither.com	1.28%
5	Chris Brown	www.chrisbrownworld.com	1.23%
6	Neil Diamond	www.neildiamond.com	1.07%
7	Beyonce World	www.beyonceworld.net	0.99%
8	New Kids on the Block	www.nkotb.com	0.98%
9	Dr. Sam and the Frivolous Action Blues Band	www.managedmusic.com	0.96%
10	Soulja-Boy	www.sodmg.com	0.94%
Note - the Hitwise data featured is based on U.S. market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites which could be reported on separately.
Source: Hitwise

Those seeking the single were emailed a link for the download and Hitwise data reveals that more than half - 52.33 percent - of visits to Coldplay.com came from a website in the Email Services category on April 29, 2008, indicating that fans were eager to receive the download.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.