The official UK albums charts top 75.

ALBUMS COMMENTARY

Artist album sales more than halved last week to 2,705,000 compared with 5,334,000 the week before--but that is no more than can be expected at this time of the year. Until recently, sales would decline much more steeply after Christmas but increasingly widespread deep discounting of both catalogue and new albums has done a great deal to provide healthy sales numbers, if not profits, well into the new year. Last week's tally of artist album sales is 14% up on the same week last year, 28% up on 2001 and 50% ahead of the week's tally of 1,799,000 in 2000, when shops were closed for longer due to millennium holidays. Sales in the last week of 2002 ...