The View make a real impact.

There was little change in the singles or albums market last week, with singles sales up 3% week-on-week at 1,462,642 while combined albums drifted gently downwards by 1.2% to 2,309,851. Fairly typical moves for the time of year, they nevertheless hide significant differences when compared to the same week last year.

Album sales last week were 13.2% below the 2,659,422 that were sold in week four of 2006, when the figures were artificially inflated as the Arctic Monkeys enjoyed the biggest debut week's sales for a new act yet, selling 364,000 copies of Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

A new band also makes an emphatic debut at number one on the album chart this week - Dundee's much-fancied The View, whose introductory long player, Hats Off To The Buskers raced to first-week sales of 103,000 copies. While that's a long way compared to the Arctic Monkeys' stellar tally, it is historically an excellent figure for a debut album by a new band in January.

Meanwhile, the singles market last week was 41% higher than in the same week last year, with downloads continuing to command the vast majority of sales, (1,316,764 of them , representing a 80.03% market share), although all three major physical formats showed improvements.

After a fortnight below the 100,000 mark, CD ...