Chris Martin is helping Alexa Chung launch a music career.

The Coldplay star is believed to have met up with the 30-year-old model in New York last month, where she played him songs she had been working on and the 37-year-old singer - who split from wife Gwyneth Paltrow earlier this year - was impressed enough to offer to use his contacts to get her started.

A source told Heat magazine: ''He listened to a demo album of tracks, which he played to his Coldplay bandmates and his producer contacts, and has already set up meetings for her with his Coldplay record label, Parlophone, as well as his friend Jay Z's Roc Nation record label.

The model-turned-presenter first became interested in making a name for herself in the music industry while she was dating Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner - who she was with for four years until July 2011 - but worried that it would be ''career suicide'' if her attempt was unsuccessful.

The source explained: ''She was on the verge of doing something when she was going out with Alex Turner, but instead she decided to move to New York and continue to write and work on her music. The last thing she wanted to do was launch herself into the music world and be a flop, which she knew would be career suicide.''