As the Mothers' Day effect worked its way out of the figures, album sales fell to their lowest levels for 41 weeks last week, writes Alan Jones .

Overall album sales fell by 28.2% week-on-week to 2,111,718, with artist albums down 25.7% at 1,724,611 and compilations declining 37.3% to 387,107.

They were last lower than this in the third week of June 2006, when only 2,033,487 albums were sold. With Mother's Day falling a week later last year, last week's ...