In just a couple of weeks Coldplay will be returning with a brand new album. Mylo Xyloto, the band’s fifth, will be released on October 24th, but tonight they hit the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York to record a very special show Live on Letterman, presented by AT&T– rethink possible.

You can watch the show online at right here, but before then Last.fm Trends takes a look at how the band’s fans are gearing up.

Coldplay are regularly one of the best-performaing bands at Last.fm. With a dedicated global fanbase, to date they’ve pulled in 3,693,145 listeners for a grand total of 199,957,812 scrobbles (that’s plays from Last.fm listeners). It’s an enormous figure, bested by just a few acts including The Beatles and Radiohead.

Since the release of Viva la Vida or Death And All His Friends in 2008 the band have returned to their relatively stable listener count of 100,000 per week, as seen in the graph below.

Click the image for a larger version. The peak they reached in spring 2009 had abated by the end of that year, and their decline has only been halted by special single releases and major award wins.

But all is not lost. They’ve still got a huge fanbase, ten times that of most artists on Last.fm, and plays for recent single “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall” shot up over the summer, staying relatively steady since – a feat many artists struggle to achieve.

It’s a sign that new material is going to explode when it drop in a little over a month’s time, something fans at the Ed Sullivan Theater will get a preview of tonight.

See how the new material goes down Live on Letterman. Tune in live from 8:00pm ET/5:00pm, PT tonight, Sept. 2oth, or catch up on-demand after the show finishes, at CBS.com.