In the last month or so I've shown some trends in album sales over the last three years. I looked at how different places in the Top 200 album chart have changed over the years, such as the #200 album, and how the sales of the #100 album have dropped far more than sales of the #10 album.

Today I have a graph that shows the percent of total weekly album sales that are represented by the Top 200. As the theory of the long tail would predict, the Top 200 accounts for a lower percent of total album sales today that it did three years ago. Between July 2004 and June 2007, that percent dropped about five points to about 35% from 40%. That's a small but meaningful annual change, about 4% per year.