Long tail long for a reason

"The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to
obscure and forgotten products - and a fortune for sellers who focused on
niche markets.

But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this
"long tail" theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available
on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.

The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers
was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st
century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in
2006. He used data from an American online music retailer to predict that
the internet economy would shift from a relatively small number of "hits" -
mainstream products - at the head of the demand curve toward a "huge number
of niches in the tail"."

Why? Because the majority of music isn't very good and is unpopular for that
reason. For 50 years, record companies abused their position as owners of
recording and copying machinery to turn out poor product in LP format - 12
songs to an album with singles sales driving everything.

If a writer wrote a novel with four excellent chapters and eight shoddy
ones, he would sink. If Nissan built a car with one round wheel and a long
tail of three square ones...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5380304.ece


.

Quantcast