BEEN DOWN SO LONG, LOOKS LIKE UP TO US

For the first time since 2004, the record business has posted four straight sales weeks that have topped last year’s results.

The market was down 2% vs. last week and up 2% vs. same week last year and now down just 7% to date. After several years of double-digit losses, that qualifies as good news, folks.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the present. Adele has a shot at returning to #1 after being displaced by Lupe Fiasco last week, where she will face a formidable challenge from Geffen’s Rise Against, the Chicago punk-rockers whose new album, Endgame, their first since 2008’s Appeal to Reason, is looking at first-week sales in the 80-90k region. Appeal to Reason debuted at #3 in Oct. 2008, with 65k. Adele has topped the U.K. charts for seven consecutive weeks, and sold more than a million copies in Britain.

The only other album of note is Interscope’s Travis Barker with his solo debut, Give the Drummer Some, which is targeted in the 20-25k range.

Hitting stores next Tuesday (3/22) are a couple of albums which should do up to 200k, according to pundits, in Jive/ZLG’s Chris Brown and Arista/RMG's Jennifer Hudson, as well as RCA/RMG's The Strokes. As for the latter, after crashing their website with a single giveaway, can they break the six-figure mark with the official album release?