Now! series secures hat-trick again.

The most successful compilation brand ever established, the Now That's What I Call Music! series celebrated its 17th birthday last year and managed to maintain its traditional domination of the sector. It didn't quite reach the dizzy heights it attained in 1999 (its most successful year yet) but combined sales of the three regular editions -- by no means the only Now! albums to sell in the year -- totalled a tidy 2.62m. Now! 47 was the runaway champion, with sales of 1.21m achieved in just six weeks at the end of the year, while Now! 46 sold 736,000 and Now! 45 shifted 674,000. They were, by some distance, the biggest-selling albums of the year.

Since its launch in 1983, the Now! series has produced the year's biggest-selling album on all but two occasions, the exceptions being in 1984 -- when Now! 3 went head-to-head with The Hits Album and was found wanting -- and in 1993; when Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You propelled The Bodyguard soundtrack to the title.

2000 was the third year in a row -- and the third year in history -- that the Now! brand has filled all of the top three places in the annual recap. In fact, it went one better, with the Now Dance 2001 album taking fourth position. The fact that Now Dance managed to finish immediately behind the regular Now albums is at least partly an indictment of the competition, or lack of it, that Now! encountered in the year, during which it clocked up a massive 21 weeks at number one.

Now Dance sold 314,000 copies -- an excellent tally for a dance disc but not the highest for what is the fourth biggest compilation of the year. In 1999 no fewer than 11 compilations sold more copies and there were no really big sellers outside the Now! stable.

The nearest rival to the Now! series in 1999 was the BMG/Sony/Warner Huge Hits 1999, which sold 552,000 copies. Its Y2K equivalent, Huge Hits 2000, sold fewer than 137,000 copies to finish the year in 34th place.

In turn, The Ministry Of Sound's The Annual -- 2000, which came closest to interrupting Now!'s domination, finished fifth for the year with sales of nearly 307,000 copies, ...