Record sales or music sales are activities related to selling music recordings through physical record shops or digital music stores. Record sales reached their peak in 1999, when 600 million people spent an average of $64 on records, achieving $40 billion in sales of recorded music. Sales continued declining in the 21st century. The collapse of record sales also made artists rely on touring for most of their income. By 2019, record sales accounted for less than half of global recorded music revenue, overtaken by streaming. Following the inclusion of streaming into record charts in the mid-2010s, record sales are also referred to as traditional sales or pure sales.

An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape, or digital. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photo album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at 33+1⁄3 rpm.