IT is not out until next month. But The Script say their third album -- '#3' -- has already been leaked on to the internet.

However, the million-selling trio say they accept the inevitable, and build it into their business model.

"It's already leaked. I've seen it in snippets. We're living in a day and age where some people who download, don't buy music so you just build it in your business model.

"For instance, we go to places like Johannesburg and Cape Town, where we don't have massive record sales, but we can sell out a 16,000-seater stadium, and they knew the words to all our songs. Well they must be getting them from somewhere," singer Danny O'Donoghue said yesterday in Dublin.

The band has also got a boost from their lead singer's role as a mentor on BBC's 'The Voice'.

But at a cost, as he became the centre of media speculation about the break-up of his four-year relationship with model Irma Mali. He was also linked to Voice contestant Bo Bruce.

"I've been put through the ringer. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. But the split happened about a month before the show started. We were just two people who weren't meant to be together. You grow apart, not due to not liking or loving one another.

"It just happens sometimes, and it happens to everybody," said the Dubliner who is now single and denies any relationship with Bruce.

However, the break-up supplied him with 'Six Degrees Of Separation' -- one of the key tracks on '#3'. The songwriter said he had no qualms about wearing his heart on his sleeve.

"Yeah she (Mali) is going to hear it. But I think I would be foolish not to put it into musical form," he said about going through the break-up from the Lithuanian-born model he met when filming the video for single 'Breakeven'.

The new record has already had an Olympic boost with the first single, anthemic 'Hall Of Fame', featuring repeatedly in TV coverage of the London Games. The track is a collaboration with fellow Voice mentor will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.

According to Mr O'Donoghue both men want to rejoin the panel of 'The Voice' in the UK for a second series.

Asked why he didn't take part in the RTE version , the vocalist said he was "never approached". '#3' is due to be released on September 7.

The band's eponymously-titled debut topped the Irish and British charts in 2008 and sold more than two million copies worldwide.

Successor, 2010's 'Science & Faith', entered the US charts at number three, spawning a radio hit with 'For The First Time'.

Source: Ken Sweeney / Irish Independent