Led by 4 debuting at the top of the Billboard 200 with 310,000 sales, Stateside album sales rose week-on-week by 7% during the final seven days of the year's half-way point with 6.34m units sold. More significantly, they were a whopping 14% up on the same week in 2010, leaving year-to-date sales just under 1% better than they were at this stage 12 months ago.

Nielsen SoundScan reports 155.46m albums were bought in the US this year up until July ...