Long Tail, The
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The Long Tail
The term ‘The Long Tail’, coined by Chris Anderson, describes a strategy of businesses, such has Amazon or NetFlix who sell an extremely wide variety of entertainment products, including those not considered to be ‘blockbusters’ or ‘best-sellers’. Because these online businesses do not require brick and mortar storefronts, there is no limitation to the goods they are able to offer.
The Long Tail is the ‘infinite shelf-space effect’--the new mass market of niches that rises when the existing bottlenecks in distribution that favor hits are removed - when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone. The Long Tail enables a myriad of niche products to share collective market with the blockbusters. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing and marketing are resetting the definition of what’s commercially viable across the board, turning sub-economic customers, products and markets into economic ones and creating a Long Tail of demand. With the long tail, formerly sub-economic products and customers are suddenly becoming the biggest market of all. The Long Tail is when technology makes it economic to offer a near infinite number of products.
The popularity of movies, books and music, until recently, have been limited by demand in a limited geographical area. For, example, films that cannot generate a certain number of theater go-ers will not be shown. Where stores like Walmart may carry only the top albums, sites like rhapsody can offer a much wider variety of music. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country. A local bookstore may carry less than 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. The average movie rental store carries less than 3,000 titles, but a fifth of NetFlix rentals are outside its top 3,000 titles.
The power of the Long Tail is that businesses are discovering new markets and expanding upon existing ones. This has resulted in 3 ‘rules’ for the new entertainment economy.
- Rule 1: Make everything available. Companies like NetFlix have made a good business from taking the hits, as well as, the obscure films that did not fair in theaters and making them available to everyone.
- Rule 2: Cut the price in half. Now lower it. Sites like Itunes can sell a seemingly endless variety of music cheaper by selling music ‘al a cart’, taking away the costs of CD manufacturers and other retail overhead.
- Rule 3: Help me find it. Great Long Tail businesses can then guide consumers further afield by following the contours of their likes and dislikes, easing their exploration of the unknown. Amazon offers ‘if you like this item, you may like these’, and on NetFlix, user recommendations are a driving force behind a films popularity.
Social Impact
The impact of ‘The Long Tail’ has been significant with regard to the arts. No longer does an aspiring novelist wait for responses from publishers that will likely never come. He/She can now simply self publish and sell their work. The publisher no longer matters; it only matters that people buy the book and enjoy it. Like the new breed of novelist, amateur film makers are no reliant upon studio support. Now, the 'B' movies can be truly profitable or at least find its own fans. Amateur film makers can make their films on little or no budget, because ultimately, through The Long Tail, there will be buyers.
Aspiring authors, musicians, amateur film makers, and other artists now have opportunities to sell their creations that did not before exist. The ‘Long Tail’ has led to a boom of individual artists self producing music and movies and self publishing books. Because a market now exists for their creations, other companies have popped up that offer artists self publishing or production services to meet a new demand. Sites like WinePress and Lulu allow aspiring authors to publish their own books, which are then marketed on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Musicians and amateur film makers can easily become sellers on sites like UnBox, EZTakes, GreenCine, Google Video and more.
This phenomenon goes beyond movies, music and books. With sites like CafePress, anybody can create their own uniquely designed t-shirts, mugs, posters, CDs and more. With just a few clicks, the average person can upload their art and be selling in no time. Because of this approach, CafePress offers thousands of unique designs and offers ‘something for everybody’. Sites like Etch Star enable artists to upload their work that can be used by them or any other site customer to customize everything from laptops to ipods.
Customers are offered an abundance of entertainment goods that go far beyond those considered main stream. Eager customers are offered the blockbusters, but also the obscure or independent entertainment that may not otherwise be available.
History
The Long Tail
A phrase coined by Chris Anderson, popularized in an article he wrote for Wired in October 2004. Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.
Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson born in 1961 holds a degree in physics for George Washington University and performed extensive research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2001 he Joined Wired Magazine as editor-in-chief. Chris Anderson wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and then became a book, published by Hyperion on July 11, 2006 that is of course, available on Amazon. His next book, [Chris Anderson's Concept of Free FREE], is scheduled to be published on July 6th, 2009 by Hyperion.
References
Wired Magazine Oct 2004, The Long Tail by Chris Anderson http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
The Long Tail http://www.thelongtail.com/
The Long Tail book Chris Anderson 2006 http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Future-Business-Selling/dp/1401302378
Open Content http://opencontent.wgbh.org/report/glossary.html
Stacy Parks, The Insiders Guide to Independent Film Distribution. Elseveir: 2007. http://books.google.com/books?id=mc-3Q5-3vTYC
Links
Cafepress - http://cafepress.com Etchstar – http://Etchstar.com Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com Netflix.com – http://www.netflix.com WinePress.com - http://www.WinePress.com Barnesandnoble.com - http://www.Barnesandnoble.com Lulu.com - http://www.lulu.com Unbox - http://www.unbox.com EZTakes - http://www.eztakes.com Google Video - http://www.video.google.com GreenCine - http://www.greencine.com