THEY have beaten Hear’Say, the Beatles and Oasis. Last night Arctic Monkeys were celebrating after their album became the fastest-selling debut in British chart history.

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not reached the top of the charts after recording 363,735 over-the-counter sales during its first week of release. Album downloads from iTunes and other online stores, which have not yet been included in the tally, are likely to push the opening sales past 400,000.

The Yorkshire group, who built their fanbase through live performances and the internet, easily beat the 306,631 mark set in 2001 by Hear’Say, the manufactured pop band created for television.

The biggest names in the music industry must now bow to the young Sheffield band whose records are distributed by an independent label. The Beatles’ 1963 debut Please Please Me spent 30 weeks at No 1 but took more than a year to sell 500,000 copies.

Arctic Monkeys have made a far bigger opening splash than Oasis. The Manchester group’s 1994 release Definitely Maybe sold 55,854 copies in its first week.

At its peak the Arctic Monkeys’ album was selling 5,000 copies an hour, outstripping the rest of the top 20 combined. Their record company, Domino, hurriedly pressed more copies to meet demand.

A spokesman for the music retailer HMV said: “People rightly draw comparisons with Oasis, but in terms of sheer impact, where a band has come from virtual obscurity to achieve huge, overnight success, we haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Beatles.”

The four members of Arctic Monkeys, led by Alex Turner, 20, an acute observer of Northern street life, are already beginning to feel the weight of great expectations.

“It’ll be built up to such a thing that if it doesn’t cure cancer or solve inner-city poverty, it’ll be a disaster,” Turner predicted.

The son of two teachers, he is drawing comparisons with Jarvis Cocker and Morrissey.

The four are receiving an ecstatic reaction every night on a sell-out nationwide tour sponsored by the music magazine NME, where they are not even the headline act.

Yet, as Hear’Say demonstrated, record-breaking debuts can actively harm a career. A more measured rise is the surest way to maintain success.

Coldplay emerged in 2000, with their Parachutes album selling a modest 70,000 copies in its first week. However, they were allowed to develop to the point where their third album, X&Y, sold 465,000 copies in Britain in its opening week. Worldwide sales for the record now stand at 7.5 million.

The fastest-selling British album remains Oasis’s Be Here Now, which came out in August 1997 and sold 655,000 copies in its first week.

The Arctic Monkeys’ album, tellingly, came fifth in NME’s greatest British albums poll, beating the Beatles’ Revolver, which came ninth.

The group is also well on its way to worldwide success, dominating the European Digital Download chart last week, and is the bestselling international release in Japan.

There, owning an Arctic Monkeys album has become the latest fashion statement. Two “buzz” concerts in Japan last November sold out in minutes. Soon after, Arctic Monkeys music videos were the staple of the Asian market music channels.

The album is being released in America next month before a tour beginning in March and the four have been already hailed as the “faces to watch in 2006” by Billboard magazine.

Arctic Monkeys will be used as a model for breaking new bands by the record industry. They allowed fans to distribute their early recordings free via the internet.

They built on that “buzz” through extensive touring but would not have made such a breakthrough without the support of radio stations, satellite video channels and “indie” music magazines.

They have refused to exploit the many commercial opportunities that are open to them. They will not allow their songs to be sold as ringtones — an area that is fast becoming the most lucrative of music spin-offs — and their publishers are not permitted to license songs for advertisements.

The band members also declined the opportunity to appear on Top of the Pops, despite heading the singles charts.

They appear happiest thrashing through their songs onstage, performing in Newcastle last night before what promises to be an emotional homecoming show in Sheffield next week.

HITTING THE HIGH NOTES

Robbie Williams is Britain’s biggest-selling artist of the 21st century, with 6.3 million sales

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