the fat tail

For years we've been banging on about how the breakdown in music genres has opened the masses up to niches - how your Auntie now enjoys a bit of Danish hip-hop as well as Wet Wet Wet on her iPod.
It only occurred to me recently - with any noticeable clarity - that the opposite is true: That the new long-tailed digital landscape also gives 'permission' for cooler kids to branch out into more mainstream music, freed from the stigma of its associated genre. I've more than once witnessed Klaxon-haired Hoxtonites hearing a Pussy Cat Dolls track and nodding approvingly. That's the shit that is.

What's that? The Fat Tail?