Review - The Long Tail

This article from Wired talks about the Zipf distribution of multimedia
content online, also known as the Long Tail. The key idea of this paper is
that it outlines how the marketing people got it wrong by promoting a
hit-driven culture in entertainment (Movies, Music, Books). The article
compares a world of scarcity and limitations of the physical world to the
abundance of the online world, where popular and unpopular content are on
equal footing.
The strength of this article is the three lessons it proposes to drive this
new world of opportunities, "Make everything available", "Cut the price in
half. Now lower it." and "Help me find it". The author discusses all three
categories (music, books and movies), backs them up by solid evidence
(iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody) and shows how the Long Tail is as profitable a
business as the popular content (in some cases bigger), as there is always
audience worldwide for less popular content. The article also illustrates
how less popular content can be promoted, for example, with Amazon's
suggestion system, which seems to work very effectively.
However, the author fails to recognize that we would never be able to get
rid of the physical distribution model. People make it their hobby to go
hunt for bargains, go hunt for presents. Fans still want their printed CD
copies of their favourite artists.

 
Received on Mon Nov 28 2005 - 02:26:49 EST