Vampire Weekend top US chart for indie label XL

The afro-beat indie rockers Vampire Weekend have topped the American album chart, making it the first time a British independent record label – XL Recordings - has reached the number one spot in the world's biggest music market in 19 years.
 
The album, Contra, took the much-coveted number one spot on the Billboard Album Chart selling 124,000 copies last week. It easily beat the previous week's number one album, Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream, which sold 77,000 copies.
 
Although Vampire Weekend are from New York, the group is signed to London-based XL, also home to grime star Dizzee Rascal and super-indie act Radiohead.
 
The last British indie label to top the US charts was Richard Branson's Virgin Records, which scored a number one hit with Paula Abdul's Spellbound in 1991. Virgin was bought by EMI a year later for $1 billion.
 
Vampire Weekend's chart-topper marks a run of success for British independents. Last year fellow XL artist Adele win two Grammys and broke into the US top 10 with her debut record 19. Here, the Arctic Monkeys, signed to Domino, have had three UK number one albums, while the White Noise label looks set to top the UK album charts this week with The Betrayed, the fourth album from the Welsh group Lostprophets.
 
Research analyst Mark Mullian says independent record labels are able to react more quickly to a changing market than the major record companies. "The need to survive has created a huge amount of innovation in the indies," says Mullian. "They were the first to release tracks on MP3 and have continued to be very strong at harnessing the opportunities of the digital model." ·