I think this is ignoring that something that pops up in the Long Tail can go viral and become a block buster. One example from the days of the origin of the Lo

I think this is ignoring that something that pops up in the Long Tail can go viral and become a block buster. One example from the days of the origin of the Long Tail was Bollywood movies. There aren't enough fans of Bollywood in one geographic location to warrant dedicating a whole theater to a showing. (I'm ignoring regional pockets, of course). However, if a movie gets lot of views online, that might boost it up the tail into the attention of more casual fans. In turn, they might boost-like it into more mainstream etc. That was much more difficult in the past where even if there was a lot of word of mouth praise, you still had the geographic distances.