Coldplay Sells Its Soul to Cingular

The band that brought us the tick of "Clocks" will now bring us annoying cell phone rings.

Coldplay struck a deal with cellular provider Cingular to debut a 30-second portion of "Speed of Sound" from its upcoming X&Y album starting yesterday. The preview, which comes a week before radio gets the track, is hitched with a massive marketing campaign to put Coldplay graphics on the Cingular web site, give the band premium placement on the provider's ringtone purchase pages and even spam celluarl providers with text messages announcing the release of the album. The move is an experiment in giving the band's release a leg up on the competition through new marketing channels.

So much for making trade fair, huh, Mr. Martin?

http://www.aversion.com/news/news_article.cfm?news_id=4122

[thanks mimi]