Close of business on Saturday marked the end of the third quarter's trading - and figures for both the week and the quarter were encouraging, writes Alan Jones.

Singles sales topped the million mark last week, at 1,026,051. The total included 433,015 physical sales - the highest for 17 weeks - and 593,036 downloads, the top tally logged since data was incorporated into the chart 25 weeks ago.

The million mark hasn't been breached since Christmas week 2002. Even more ...