Guy Hands just passed his first test running EMI. Coldplay, the biggest act on the British major's roster, has brought out what looks to be a big hit with the new album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends.

HMV, Britain's largest music retailer, forecast that the album, released yesterday, would sell 200,000 copies in the first three days of issue. There are hopes that it will match the band's previous offering, X&Y, and sell between 300,000 and 400,000 in the first week and sail comfortably to No 1.

The album comes out in the US next week and EMI has high hopes that Coldplay can deliver in the world's largest music market after record pre-orders on iTunes.

The bar remains high, though. In 2005, X&Y sold 3.2 million albums in the US and more than 10 million worldwide.

It helps that Coldplay got great reviews but good music is only part of the picture. EMI won't reveal the secret to its success but one well-known singer, who asked not to be named, says: “If this record fails, Guy Hands will quit recorded music.”

No one at EMI wants to put pressure on the British band. “We don't like to see bands on the business pages,” is the regularly repeated mantra. However,the reality is that no media company likes to be reminded that it is dependent on only one or two stars.

Yet, credit is due to Mr Hands. When he took over last year, he walked into the Radiohead debacle in which the famously independent-minded band decided to quit the label and release the album In Rainbows on their own via the internet. Many questioned whether the record company had any future.

To keep Coldplay happy, Mr Hands agreed to give the marketing plan to Dave Holmes, the band's manager, and let him decide with whom he chose to work. This approach fitted in with Mr Hands' ethos that the artist comes first even if it said little about EMI's ability to lead the project.

Radiohead had opted to let customers decide how much they wanted to pay for the In Rainbows download. The average paid was estimated at £3.88 but the number of downloads was never revealed. A conventional CD followed, which has, so far, sold 500,000 in the US. A reasonable figure, but EMI couldn't risk that sort of result on an £8.95 record.

What followed were a series of Radiohead-inspired free offers which acknowledged that, in the era of illegal downloading, listeners want to sample music first. Equally importantly, the final album would not be given away.

Coldplay announced two free gigs, in London and New York, and a third in Barcelona followed. The single, Violet Hill, was given away as a download and as a free seven-inch with NME. Two million people took the download offer and a second single, Viva La Vida, was given away to anyone who pre-ordered the album.

The song Viva La Vida was also used in Apple's television advertising in what became one of the few attempts at mainstream marketing that the band's team used. In the UK, most of the Coldplay campaign was conducted in the music press and broadsheet newspapers - each of which were only too happy to write about the giveaway stunts.

Chris Martin, the Coldplay front man, has been upbeat about EMI. In a recent interview he said: “I know that these days you're supposed to say that being on a major label is totally antiquated but we're fine with the label and we love the people we work with.”

EMI has shown that, as a record label, it is not completely finished. But its market share is running at its lowest level for years and Mr Hands knows he may have to repeat the Coldplay feat many more times.

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