everything is miscellaneous

Does anybody think that Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory can be applied to music critics? In other words, with the advent of the concept of the infinite catalogue, instead of everyone reading a handful of immensely powerful, hip critics, there are 500,000+ critics to read on the Web now and the residual power lying with these few is growing smaller and smaller (even accounting for immensely influential nodes such as Pitchfork and Australia's Mess And Noise).

According to Chris, 40% of all record sales are now in releases that sell less than 10,000 (as Wikipedia says, citation needed).

Or does criticism still remain about heirarchy - and all that has changed are the structures? Goddamnit, don't look at me. I don't know anything. I can't even write about music anymore without worrying about context. As I stated in Plan B a few months back, my greatest strength used to be that I took everything OUT of proportion. Being a parent fucks you up in so many different ways. I'd kind of always assumed that the critical heirarchy was based on the same philosophy that kept the men behind the Cold War so gainfully employed for so many years: but what happens when all notions of objectivity and balance are finally removed (cf: blogs, paysites such as amazon, eBay etc)? The centre is lost. The centre is lost. I might well feel that my interpretative paradigm borders on a feminist-slanted post-structuralism, but I don't necessarily enjoy seeing life that way.