Music bucks flat Xmas retail trend: supermarkets benefit most as last-minute rush results in 9% year-on-year sales hike.(Retail)

Christmas finished with a flourish for the music industry, with more than 5.3m albums sold over the counter in the last three days of trading.

Music sales bucked general retail trends--with many other sectors reporting disappointing business--with 16.3m albums leaving stores in the closing two weeks of the year.

The performance was boosted by a resurgence in the last three days before Christmas--a 9.0% year-on-year increase saw nearly 7.1m albums sold during Christmas week--after pre-Christmas week sales slipped back on 2002's levels.

Tesco senior music buying manager Alan Hunt says the last-minute rush reflected the fact that Christmas Day 2003 fell on a Thursday, giving customers several days that week to carry out their festive shopping.

"A lot of people didn't think about Christmas until that week because there were three shopping days even after the weekend and they thought there was plenty of time to go out and get what they want," he says. "That's when the food shopping gets done, so we always have a stronger last couple of days than the High Street."

Tesco alone sold more than 1m chart albums in the five days leading up to Christmas to lift its music sales for the week by 33% on the equivalent period the previous year, although Hunt says the late demand put pressure on retailers to ensure they were not caught out with either too much stuck or empty shelves for popular titles.

He adds, "As an industry, we regard Christmas as starting in October, but it is really three weeks in December--and it's becoming two weeks in December."