Every Now! and again - compilations hit celebrates 25 years.

Now! brand marks record-breaking first-week sales and 25th anniversary with first-volume re-release on CD

The time is Now!: latest release Now! 70 has broken first-week sales records and the first volume in its original vinyl and cassette forms, released in 1983

The team behind Now! is following the biggest first-week sales in the compilation's history with a programme of activity to mark the brand's 25th anniversary.

The planned celebrations this autumn will include an ITV special tentatively called Now That's What I Call Music! 1983, which will celebrate the birth of the world's most successful compilations series by looking at the acts who featured on the first album a quarter of a century ago.

That double album, issued in December 1983 by the then-separate Virgin and EMI, was groundbreaking in being the first such TV-advertised hits set released by frontline, repertoire-generating labels rather than a compilations specialist such as K-Tel or Ronco.

Featuring 30 tracks, including hits by Phil Collins, Culture Club, Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo, the compilation spent five weeks at number one on what was then a combined albums chart. It was followed by all but one of the regular albums reaching number one on, initially, the general albums chart and then the spin-off compilations chart, which was launched in 1989 - mainly because the likes of Now! were "clogging up" the albums countdown.

As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, EMI commercial marketing co-managing director Peter Duckworth reveals the first Now! will be made available on CD for the first time, featuring cardboard packaging to reflect its original release as a vinyl album, while a new compilation, Now! 25 Years, will sum up the first two-and-half decades of the brand across three CDs.