Message from the soul sisters: a handful of new artists are quietly winning mainstream success with back-to-basics campaigns which bypass the hit single route. And more such newcomers are set to follow.(Talent)

Among the many challenges currently facing the UK record business, arguably the greatest is turning talented artists with a strong industry buzz into mainstream album sellers.

There is certainly no shortage of factors which are reeled out to explain the difficulties--the ever more homogenised state of UK radio, the lack of music on TV, the waning influence of the specialist press or the pressure on labels to achieve short-term success. And yet it is still possible to achieve such breakthroughs, as the success of artists as diverse as Norah Jones, Dido, David Gray and Eva Cassidy has shown.

Musically, these artists have little in common, and the ways in ...