The Wal-Mart Effect

Of the estimated 30,000 new albums released each year, Wal-Mart carries just 750, according to David Gottlieb, a former label executive.

That works out to only 2.5 percent of the new music released each year; and those 4,500 titles in the total inventory are less than half a percent of all the music available.

Entire categories, from Dance to Spoken-Word, are either missing or buried deep in catch-all categories such as “Rock/Pop/R&B.”

There are no copies of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street or Nirvana’s Nevermind.

There you have it.

Scarcity, bottlenecks, the distortion of distribution, and the tyranny of shelf space all wrapped up in one big store. Again, it’s ironic, this paradox of plenty: Walk into a Wal-Mart and you’re overwhelmed by the abundance and choice.

Yet look closer and the utter thinness of this cornucopia is revealed.

Wal-Mart’s shelves are a display case a mile wide and twenty-four inches deep.

At first glance that may look like everything, but in a world that’s actually a mile wide and a mile deep, a veneer of variety just isn’t enough.