Strong acts shore up album sales.(The Market)

After achieving their second highest level of the year in the week before Father's Day, album sales made their expected retreat last week but held up better than anticipated, declining fractionally under 13% to 2,579,248.

With the further complication that Keane's eagerly awaited second album Under The Iron Sea posted an understandable but savage 64.3% dip week-on-week to 79,438 sales while remaining at number one, it is a pretty good performance overall. With the World Cup still in full flow, sales were off only 1.8% last week compared to the same week in 2005, when there was nothing of any note to draw attention away from retail. Obviously, the start of new sales at HMV and Woolworths cushioned this week's decline, but these chains also started sales in the same week last year.

Making a surprisingly small contribution to album sales, Madonna's first live album, I'm Going To Tell You A Secret, which was packaged with a DVD, debuts at number 18 on sales of 14,449. Featuring recordings of 14 songs from her 2004 Reinvention Tour--among them hits such as Vogue, Like A Prayer, Music and Holiday, as well as her take on John Lennon's Imagine--it is her 17th album; all of its predecessors made the top five.