CHARTS ANALYSIS: Santa delivers good cheer for sales charts.

Defying the retail doom and gloom evident elsewhere, the record industry posted impressive sales increases for both the last week of 2008 and the first of 2009.

Album sales for Week 52 (ending Saturday 27 December) were more than 2m up on the same week in 2007 at 6,781,768 (a 47.79% increase), while singles sales topped the 4m mark for the first time ever, charging to 4,028,840 thanks to Santa's delivery of new MP3 players and gift cards for iTunes and similar sites. Week 1 2009 data was also impressive, with OCC reporting sales of 3,571,236 albums and 3,524,759 singles - increases of 30.92% and 59.59% on first week 2008 sales, respectively.

The Circus by Take That became the first album ever to sell more than 300,000 for four weeks in a row when it shifted 312,710 copies a fortnight ago. It remains at number one in the first week of 2009, though with a somewhat less stellar sale of 46,928, while increasing its five-week cumulative sales to 1,493,063. It lost fully 85% of its sales week-on-week, the second steepest decline in the chart, behind Il Divo's The Promise, which dives 9-33 on sales of 9,798 - an 86.5% decline week-on-week. Take That's closest challenger is Kings Of Leon's Only By The Night, which sold 43,897 copies last week to lift its career tally to 1,225,537. In a close battle for third place, Duffy's Rockferry - the biggest-selling album of 2008 - climbs 6-3 on sales of 31,111, narrowly beating Leona Lewis' Spirit, down 2-4 on sales of 30,584, and The Killers' Day & Age, down 4-5 on sales of 30,306.

Meanwhile, Girls Aloud's appearance on a clutch of TV shows and heavy discounting propels their The Sound Of Girls Aloud: The Greatest Hits 45-6, with sales jumping 51.6% to 28,941. The 2006 chart-topper has now sold 940,983 copies. Girls Aloud's latest album, Out Of Control, dips 5- 10, with sales of 22,259 taking its nine week total to 614,044.

The only other albums in the Top 40 to increase sales week-on-week were all boosted by high rankings in year-end polls: Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid jumps 47-11 with sales up 15.2% at 20,482; MGMT's Oracular Spectacular improves 3.7% to 17,709 sales and leaps 48-13, and The Ting Tings' We Started Nothing bounces 59-26 with a 2% increase to 12,963 sales.

Michael Jackson's King Of Pop compilation deserves a mention for an impressive 55-20 leap despite a 5.5% dip in sales to 14,280. It is on sale at iTunes for just #3.95 and 78% of its sales (11,138) came via downloads, a record for a Top 20 album. It is the number one download, ahead of Kings Of Leon's Only By The Night (8,383 sales), though the latter album is now the third biggest seller on downloads, with a career tally of 112,606. It should surpass the 116,086 sales of Coldplay's Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends this week but will take a little longer to dethrone Amy Winehouse's Back To Black (130,843).

Very few albums ever make their Top 75 debut in the first week of the year - but American singer/songwriter Jason Mraz's We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things does so this week, entering at number 35 on sales of 9,655 copies. It has taken the album - which previously peaked at number 110 - 33 weeks to dent the Top 75, and its success is largely due to the popularity of reactivated single I'm Yours, which fell short of the chart last June despite being released digitally and physically. It has since become the star attraction in Mraz's live set, and has been nominated for a Grammy award. With Radio One now ...