Singles become unlikely success story after another strong year.

Huge digital growth and steady physical sales have revitalised a market previously written off as a lost cause

The singles market is on track to register one of its highest yearly sales since records began, providing a rare highlight in a troubled recorded music business.

Some 50.8m singles were sold in the first 43 weeks of 2007, considerably more than the totals for all of 2003 (30.9m), 2004 (32.3m) and 2005 (47.8m) respectively.

In addition, BPI figures reveal that singles sales grew by 48.0% between 2004 and 2005, and increased by 39.7% between 2005 and 2006. Were the market to grow at a similar rate this year - and both the BPI and the OCC say that they have every reason to believe it will - this would result in sales of around 93m units in 2007, the highest yearly total since BPI records began in 1973.

And while this total would obviously be boosted by sales of single track downloads, growing evidence suggests that the physical sales market, long written off, may be on the verge of a revival, as record companies explore new marketing tactics, such as Sony BMG releasing Leona Lewis's second single Bleeding Love concurrently in digital and physical formats, which resulted in a number one with massive sales in both formats.

"If you have a pop artist then the demand is there for physical product," says Era chairman Paul Quirk. "Record companies are all trying different models, trying to find one that works. They have now seen a great model that works."

A healthy 112,776 units - or 51.5% - of Bleeding Love's 218,805 first- week sales were on CD, a situation that is a rarity in the current singles market, around 90% of which is download sales.