Will The Long Tail survive if Blockbuster dies?

I found some interesting perspectives on The Long Tail after the reading and discussion of phenomenon. Two of the questions I find relevant in this context are:
1. If the tail can’t exist unless it has a body of mainstream to cling on to, how is it going to handle the ‘death of Blockbuster’?
2. Why is it important that the consumers go down The Tail? If you want to listen to Britney Spears, you want to listen to Britney Spears and not some 1980s ska band from Coventry, England (using Chris Anderson's example from the article ‘The Long Tail’).

1. If The Tail can’t exist unless it has a body of mainstream to cling on to, how is it going to handle the ‘death of Blockbuster’?
“…the success of Netflix, Amazon, and the commercial music services shows that you need both ends of the curve. Their huge libraries of less-mainstream fare set them apart, but hits still matter in attracting consumers in the first place.” So says Chris Anderson in the article ‘The Long Tail’. If what Anderson later claims in his public diary about the death of Blockbuster, the end of hits as we know them and people not following the herd anymore is becoming a reality, then The Long Tail could become a lot shorter in the future.

It seems like Anderson is contradicting himself, but perhaps he is doing so, because The Long Tail-train already has taken off. And almost every citizen in the global digital world is on it. By now most people know the main places to go on the Internet in the search of music, books, film ect. and once they are in the ‘shop’, the trip down The Long Tail can begin. One could argue that The Long Tail began in a time when mainstream was necessary to get the customers to the ‘shop’, but as the world becomes more and more aware of the possibilities of the Internet, mainstream is playing a smaller role in The Long Tail-theory.

2. Why is it important that the consumers go down the tail? If you want to listen to Britney Spears, you want to listen to Britney Spears and not some 1980s ska band from Coventry, England (using Andersons example from the article ‘The Long Tail’).
Anderson calls The Long Tail the ending of the tyranny of the hits, and I can see why. Consumers can now get what they like the most and not what somebody in the industry decided should be the most liked. But I think it’s important to remember that hits didn’t become hits for no reason, they became hits because a lot of people liked it (that being music, books, film ect.). Things in the ‘lower’ end of The Tail are not becoming big hits because not enough people like it. People from the different industries most sometimes know what they are talking about. And why should consumers go down The Tail, if they are happy with the content in top of the popularity-scale, as it seems a lot of the ‘hit-buying’ consumers are?

One answer to that could be that you never know if The Long Tail is going to present you to something new and exciting. Something you would actually like. In other words it could be a cultural eye-opener. Another could be that they shouldn’t, but The Tail gives the opportunity for doing so, and the fact that it’s in ‘the shallow end of the bitstream’ the different industries makes most of their money, shows that a lot of consumers like to go down The Tail. Even if they just intended to buy the newest song from Britney Spears.