Artists drive Xmas: big names shore up sales in tough holiday for compilations and singles.(Retail)

The UK music business enters the New Year after a Christmas holiday period which saw solid sales for artist albums let down by a slump in the compilations and singles markets.

Artist albums--led by Il Divo, Robbie Williams and Scissor Sisters--gave a performance on par with 2003's impressive Christmas, according to OCC data.

Figures indicate that in 2003, 5.8m units left the stores in the four days to Christmas Day (which fell on a Thursday), compared to 6.9m in six days in 2004 (when Christmas Day fell on a Saturday). Per day, 2004's figure amounts to 1.15m, compared to 1.45m in 2003.

But a clearer overall picture of Christmas trade is illustrated by the 22.4m artist album units which were sold in the four weeks up to and including Christmas week, a marginal 100,000 down on the total of 22.5m for the previous Christmas, which was hailed as one of the best on record for music.

However, the compilations market suffered a decline of almost 11% year-on-year--800,000 fewer units were sold in the four weeks leading up to Christmas in 2004 (7.1m in total) compared to the previous year's figure of 7.9m. Christmas week itself saw 335,000 units sold per day; compared to 480,000 in 2003.

Paul Quirk, owner of Quirk's Records in Ormskirk, described the compilations business ,as "disastrous", with sales for the year down 40%.

Unsurprisingly, the singles market continued to under-perform year-on-year during December. Singles sales in the six days leading up to Christmas 2004 amounted ...