First-quarter releases slump as labels concentrate on Q4. (News).

Quarter one is, year-by-year, becoming an increasingly barren desert for key new studio albums, with record companies instead pushing for extra sales from already-issued releases.

Epic signing Celine Dion's A New Day Has Come, which was yesterday (Sunday) expected to debut at number one, became the first album release of this year by an already-established superstar act, continuing a trend that has been developing in the past half decade. It is one of just 24 brand new studio albums to debut in the Top 40 this year, a decline of around 40% on the level of 10 years ago.

Polydor's joint managing director David Joseph, whose company has topped the chart this year with pre-2002 releases by Enrique Iglesias and Sting & The Police, says labels are focusing even more now on the vital final quarter.

"There's no doubt the pressure is increasing throughout the industry to release albums in the last quarter, when 50% of the business is done," he says. "You want to put all your records out when they sell the most, which often leads to a barren time in the first three months of the year."

HMV's head of music Mark Noonan notes that most of the albums that have come out in the first quarter, such as those by the the Chemical Brothers and Cooper Temple Clause, have been fan-base ones that have initially sold strongly only to drop off. "Putting everything into the final quarter makes things very difficult," he says. "From a ...