Comment by kibwen

Agreed. I upvoted the article because I think it's interesting to consider, but a statement like "the number of artists on the Billboard Hot 100 has been decreasing for decades" is entirely compatible with the notion that the proportion of the population listening to the long tail rather than the artists on the Billboard 100 could be higher than ever. Taylor Swift is big, but she's still no Michael Jackson or The Beatles in terms of cultural penetration, and probably never will be.