NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. stocks kicked off the final trading session of 2004 Friday with minor gains as the markets aimed to close the year on an upbeat note.

It was, after all, a year in which major stock indexes posted solid gains and held up well despite a 34 percent hike in oil prices.

The Dow Jones industrials were up 4.36 points, or 0.04 percent, to 10,804.66 in early trading. Nasdaq climbed 2.48, or 0.11 percent, to 2,180.82, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index inched upward 0.56, or 0.05 percent, to 1,214.11.

Bonds gained as the 10-year Treasury note rose 14/32, or $4.375 for each $1,000 invested. The yield fell to 4.263 percent.

The dollar weakened, trading at 103.07 yen, down from 103.89, while the euro rose against the dollar to $1.3643 from $1.3601.

Markets were closed in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand for the holiday.

Retailers make gains in Internet sales

NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A U.S. Web site-tracking service says Amazon was the most frequently visited Internet shopping site in 2004, Cox News said Friday.

After Amazon, eBay was the second most often visited site, followed by Dell.com, the Hitwise survey found.

Dell, which didn't make the top 10 list in 2003, attracted more traffic than the sites of the nation's biggest traditional retailers, including Walmart.com, Bestbuy.com and Target.com.

But those retailers also made impressive gains in cyberspace, with Walmart.com and Target.com posting 18 percent increases in 2004.

Meanwhile, e-commerce tracker ComScore Networks said overall online holiday sales grew by about 29 percent from a year ago to about $15.8 billion during November and December.

2004 U.S. album sales set to post rise

NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Sales of U.S. music albums appear set to rise this year for the first annual gain in four years, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Nielsen SoundScan says sales of albums through the week ended Sunday reached 665.5 million units, up 1.4 percent from the same point in 2003. The industry has one more week of sales left before getting a final tally for the year.

Any sales increase is important, but the final number still will represent a disappointing slide from the 7 percent to 8 percent gains that the industry saw through the first nine months of the year.

The prospective increases mark a small victory for record companies in their fight against piracy, a long creative drought and competing entertainment media.

2004 U.S. album sales set to post rise

HONOLULU, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Aloha Airlines has joined Hawaii's only other inter-island airline in filing for bankruptcy court protection, KITV-TV, Honolulu, reported Friday.

Aloha, which lists assets of $100 million and debts of the same amount, owes its main creditor, First Hawaiian Bank, $43.8 million. The company, which owns 27 aircraft and employees 3,668 people, also owes the federal government $24 million from a $45 million loan.

Hawaiian Airlines also is in bankruptcy.

"These are hard times for all airlines. Bankruptcy is hard on a company and its employees, so we have lots of sympathy for our colleagues and competitors at Aloha," said Hawaiian Airlines trustee Joshua Gobaum.

A hearing on Hawaiian's reorganization plan is set for Jan. 25, by which date the airline hopes to have gained labor concessions from its unions.