UK is miracle market in the making: as global music sales decline, the UK albums sector's 8% hike makes us star performers.(Editorial)

The UK market is in danger of becoming known as the miracle market.

It is easy to lose sight of how much is being achieved in this market in 2003, especially when have our noses to the grindstone and we are working overtime to put records out, raise their profile and encourage punters to buy them.

The trade delivery figures which were unveiled last week are remarkable. They show a market which is still selling up to 8% more albums than it did last year.

Even the overall value of the market is climbing, despite the desperate state of the singles sector--which remains a miserable cloud on the landscape--and supermarket-led discounting.

In international terms, that is astonishing.

You can argue that the growth in album sales is only being driven by rampant price-cutting. But no-one should kid themselves; we are not the only market to look towards pricing to build unit sales.

The Americans have tried it, much of Europe has tried it. But no other markets have achieved the results which we have. Even the French market--the only other to record consistent growth while the test of the world declines--is now on the slide.