Massive first week for Coldplay kicks off strong autumn season. (News).

Coldplay's second album has ushered in the crucially important September to December trading period in spectacular fashion, becoming one of the fastest-selling albums of the year.

The Parlophone-issued A Rush Of Blood To The Head was yesterday (Sunday) challenging to beat Oasis's 230,000 opening-week over-the-counter tally for Heathen Chemistry to become the year's fastest seller, after taking just 48 hours to shift more than 100,000 copies.

Parlophone managing director Keith Wozencroft believes the band are being paid back for their hard work on first album Parachutes. "It shows they haven't just had a successful pop album driven by a couple of singles. The impact seems to have been quite deep in the UK and internationally and earned a strong fan-base, part of which have gone out to buy this record," he says.

Coldplay's album was joined in-store last week by other key new albums from Polydor's Daniel Bedingfield and Queens Of The Stone Age and Universal Island signings Sugababes, marking the start of a hectic three-month period of high-profile new albums.

"If you look into the schedule going forward there's something every week now right up to November after quite a quiet summer," says Virgin Megastores and V Shop head of music Jim Batchelor.

Universal is today (Monday) preparing to declare its full autumn line-up in an all-day conference at London's Bernard Shaw Plaza, with EMI following tomorrow (Tuesday) at Bafta. BMG is returning to the capital's Mermaid Theatre on September 18, while Warner is presenting at the Landmark Hotel on September 13.

However, ahead of those conferences, Entertainment UK commercial director Richard Izard is already convinced the industry has a strong pre-Christmas line-up.