Why I love the Amazon Whole Foods Deal!

If you saw my TED talk from a couple of years ago you know that I basically blame the 'Grocery Store' for creating the monstrous agriculture system in this country that's devastated our rural economies. So I was super joyful to see Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods as a huge step forward for American Small Diversified Farmers because this is going to drive Grocery Shopping Online. Why? Because of a phenomenon known as The Long Tail.

The Long Tail is an internet phenomenon coined by Chris Anderson about a decade ago and described as:

"The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail."

If you put this in the context of recorded music it's pretty easy to understand. There used to be these things called record stores. They historically were small urban discovery zones and then morphed into record superstores like Best Buy and Virgin Megastores...If you wanted to buy a song, you had to hop in your car and visit one of these. The issue was that they 'Curated' what music you listened to. Even with a giant selections, they could only house a couple thousand songs.

Along comes iTunes and suddenly this entire model is disrupted and we all have millions of songs at our fingertips. This has been terrible for the mega stores, but amazing for consumers.

The other huge beneficiary has been musicians.   Think about it....in the olden days (15 years ago) if you were a musician trying to make a living you either became a mega star or you starved.   If you weren't big you were starving.  There was no middle ground....no room for a musician who perhaps only made a decent living...

My 20-something kids now listen and attend concerts around the country by bands that most people have never heard of;  Twiddle, Jill Andrews, Walk on the Moon, Future & The Wood Brothers.

All of these bands wouldn't have professional careers if customers weren't listening and paying for their songs online. That's the long tail. I would be surprised if all of these acts are bringing in revenue in the low millions (another great internet band).