The Long Tail 290
Chris Anderson writes "I'm the editor of Wired Magazine and if you'll forgive the autohornblowing, I think you'll be interested in my piece in our latest issue. It argues, with a lot of new data, that the entertainment industry is shifting from an era of hit-driven economics to one of niche-driven economics. Content that was once relegated to the fringe, beneath the threshold of commercial viability, is now increasingly able to find a market in distributed audiences, marking a shift towards the previously-neglected Long Tail of the demand curve."
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same of Frank Sinatra or Bobby Derren. Why does their music have impact and BS doesn't?
interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
The Wired Rule of Content (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm. You know there were 8 TV series (seasons) of Red Dwarf done by the BBC, along with a movie that's in production, right? The two books only cover a part of the first season. The first 4 series are on DVD now, so go hit your local library or DVD rental store and check it out.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not convinced... (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess we will see how things turn out. I'm not saying the article is wrong, I'm just saying 'the business' will have to change.
Re:I'm the editor of weerd magazine and (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course his objective in doing so is to generate page hits but if he does provide us with an intesting article and doesn't make a habit of it unlike some other submitters I don't really mind.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's certainly nothing wrong with Britney Spears if you're into her. It's what someone likes...and the "music" is really secondary to BS or others of her ilk. It's the entertainment that's the draw.
Porn is the cultural touchstone (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are going to Auto-horn-blow... (Score:1, Insightful)
You are basically using your position at Wired to override the whole moderation process to publicize an article you wrote and your views. If you are going to do that, I would like to see if you are more qualified, at least on paper, than the average slashdot user. I don't think being a writer/editor for Wired automatically makes your voice about economics more important than another Slashdot user. If you were editor of the Wall St. Journal or a professor of economics, then maybe.
I will give you respect, however, for being honest about publicizing your own article and not using some pseudoname. Perhaps Slashdot should create a special category like shamelessplug.slashdot.org.
Ok article, but not great (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the article did not need to be as long as it was. The same point was repeated over and over, and although there's nothing wrong with presenting evidence, I thought, "Ok, I get it." The article also had that high-school-position-paper feel to it. I would have preferred to see more facts and a little less dissertation.
Not so for everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
But then i read the article and, lo and behold! it was actually interesting.
Not all advertising is evil.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:2, Insightful)
But there's certainly nothing wrong with Britney Spears if you're into her. It's what someone likes...and the "music" is really secondary to BS or others of her ilk. It's the entertainment that's the draw.
Right, but on radio, there's little of Britney to see (clothed or otherwise) whereas I'd say Sinatra, Derren, Holiday, Jordan(*), et al have, for lack of a better word, presence that transcends decades and a purely audio medium. Britney sounds too much like her contemporaries, so it's her prancing around on stage and the audience fascination with whatever she says in magazines or does in her personal life (as observed by tabloids) that carries her.
* I'd never heard of Louis Jordan until I had satellite, now I've got many of his albums, an amazing, talented writer, composer and singer I would have probably gone my life without ever hearing of.
Re:More Democratic Market (Score:5, Insightful)
My metric for this is "would this person be entertaining if you gave them a microphone and a couple of acoustic instruments to back them and sat them down on a stage?" And in the case of nonvocal music, it's a question of whether the music itself is sufficiently enjoyable to stand on its own merit. If neither of these metrics are met, then it may be entertainment but it's not really music. And some pop songs are decently catchy and enjoyable, in *spite of* the singer behind them - you can have a great songwriter or producer behind an otherwise mediocre talent and still come up with something that sounds pretty good. And I can appreciate those songs for what they are, but still dismiss the singer as worthless.
Re:If you are going to Auto-horn-blow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, what would the difference have been if I had seen this article on their website and submitted it and gotten it accepted? Would you be complaining then about his writing credentials?
Re:Dear Mr. Anderson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not convinced... (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. Just bear in mind that many of those misses only exist because the people who had millions felt pressure to push out some sort of product, rather than dedication to an idea.
Most movies, games and even music are manufactured in the same manner that thingamabobs are manufactured, simply because the machinery exists and needs to be fed.
Trimming the pyrite doesn't at all imply a proportional trimming of the gold. They come from different mines.
KFG
THANK YOU. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Two different effects (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems as though Mr Anderson is describing two different effects here, though they both spring from one root cause: the advent of large Internet-based stores with low overheads which have an effectively national (or even global) market.
On the one hand, there is the 'long tail' of the curve, that is, the sale of many different items, each of which sells in low volume. These are the niche products which most people will never have heard of.
On the other hand, he describes the impact the new economy has had on bringing niche products into the mainstream, making them big hits.
His first example (the success of the book Touching the Void) is really of the second type. It's not an example of the long tail at all, but an instance where the new economy has thrust an obsure book into the mainstream. This is really not essentially different to the very familiar case in which an artist, scientist, etc. is only appreciated long after their original work is produced --- only after some comfortable context has been provided in which to situate the work.
I've been expecting this (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no American teen sound and hasn't been for years, and the music business model hasn't really changed since the days of American Bandstand. A musician who might do perfectly well on his own selling 10K records a year at $5/profit per record isn't helped by the industry to sell 20K or 50K, he's dumped by the label and out of the nusic business.
Remember heavy metal? It's fragmented into a number of subgenres as different as chalk and cheese.
I'm sure this is going on in lots of markets that I'm not even remotely familiar with.
How can gigantic entertainment monoliths get their ears into enough sub-markets to find the most profitable players? Well, automated analysis of P2P network downloads is one possibility, but they're paying for it while they are trying to make them illegal.
This is the content industry's ultimate long-tern problem, and if they don't solve it, no amount of DRM and anti-technology legislation can save them.
Re:demographics and buying habits (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's become cool to say 'I don't do what other people do' (not to mention containing almost lethal levels of irony), kids might say that. And then go out and buy what their favorite star wears anyway. Maybe they don't think that's what they're doing, I'm sure there's all sorts of rationalizations in their head. But I'd like to see actual numbers showing that when pop star X stars wearing blue pants, sales of non-blue pants amongst fans actually goes up.
So yeah, that's kind of a tricky study to do, but still. Everyone claiming they're suddenly independent doesn't make me necessarily believe it.
He almost got it right (Score:4, Insightful)
He states "That leaves the costs of finding, making, and marketing music. Keep them as they are, to ensure that the people on the creative and label side of the business make as much as they currently do.". But just as new technology is opening up new avanues for media distribution, it's giving us completely new ways to produce and market that media. A band can now cut an album and put it online using inexpensive equipment. A good band can now get promoted online through word of mouth. No need for expensive A&R men, no need for payola on the radio, no need for any of the services traditionally provided by the record companies. As technology gets better, the film industry is being changed too. A special effect CGI that cost millions to do just 15 years ago can now be accomplished on a desktop computer.
The point is, just as changes in technology are changing the economics of distribution, they are changing the economics of media manufacture and promotion. This is a great thing.
Quoted the article twice today (Score:4, Insightful)
I've lived through 30+ years of overhyped predictions about the future, starting way back when with The Greening of America. But there's a big difference between a book/essay that's trying to shape the future by exhorting its readers to make the future that way and one that is slightly more objective and says that it thinks things are developing in such a way as to come to this predicted future. I mention all this just to say "I hope that I won't be fooled again."
And that I think what these various authors say is most likely true: there seems to be an inevitable democritization of media/commerce that allows for the Long Tail, whether it be in newspapers, bookstores, blogging, music stores or whatever. All seem to have the common thread of better too much than too little, better too all-inclusive than too exclusive. From what I've seen they are right and we might, I hope, all gain from it.
I just wish I could figure out how to make a good living from it.:-)
inversions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced (Score:3, Insightful)
I try to watch movies that I like. I rarely go to theaters because it's a waste of money. I rarely by CDs because as an entire album they're a waste of money. I try to enjoy the television shows, music, and movies that interest me.
Who cares if half of my generation is being brainwashed by MTV or Miramax? That's their problem, not mine to worry about.
I've always had these discussions with people about how our culture is turning to a pile of shit because corporations found it's so easy to tell us what to like instead of us deciding. However, that doesn't mean I have to follow the same rules.