Nielsen Soundscan says that during the week ended May 30, the U.S. music industry only sold a total of 4.98 million albums, including new and catalog releases. That figure represents the lowest number of albums sold in one week since Soundscan started gathering this data in 1994.

In comparison, the week ended May 31, 2009 had 5.76 million album sales. The highest one-week tally was recorded in late December 2000, with 45.4 million albums.

This past week's record low didn't come as a surprise since major companies are still trying to overcome a decade-long decline in sales, just like the other major industries are trying to cope up with changes of their own.

There might not be an accurate method to compare the latest total against pre-Soundscan records, but Billboard says that the weekly album sales could be considered to be at its lowest point since the early 1970s.

"We think this is the lowest week ever, or at least of the Soundscan era," Universal Music Group Distribution president Jim Urie said.

The Recording Industry Association of America said that album shipments in 1973 summed up to 388.2 million units, averaging 7.47 million a week. Since Soundscan obtains data on albums sold and not albums shipped, Billboard looked at the relationship between annual album shipments, as measured by the RIAA, and annual albums sold, as gathered by Soundscan, for the years 1992-2009. During that time, shipments went beyond scans by an average of 30 per cent.

When Billboard applied that 30 per cent figure to the 1973 RIAA shipment data, it estimated the weekly album sales volume for that year to have totaled about 5.5 units. That surpasses this past week's record by 600,000 copies.

Veteran sales executives warned about putting too much stock into pre-Soundscan record-keeping.

"Who the hell knows what weekly sales were back then," said Lou Dennis, a retired Warner Bros. Records head of sales.

Industry executives agree that no matter what the standard is, this week's album sales total of 4.98 million units is "pretty scary", as described by Bruce Ogilvie, CEO of leading music wholesaler Super D.

Far from the album sales record are the digital track sales which totaled 21.7 million.

UMGD's Urie says that due to the past week's album total, there is "all the more reason why everyone in the industry should be focused on getting the U.S. Congress to introduce legislation that makes the Internet service providers our allies in fighting piracy. Piracy is getting worse and worse, and the government needs to focus on that."

Urie feels that the light release schedule is the main reason for the decline.

"This week is likely a major aberration, with no big new releases out," he said.

"June will be big. Look at all the big records coming out, including Sara McLachlan, Drake, Miley Cyrus, Eminem and Jack Johnson."