The notion of the ‘hit’ has, for years, driven our entertainment economy. But a new digital entertainment economy has arrived. With the online world’s capacity to surpass distribution limitations of physicality – geographical and production/packaging – the tyranny of the hit is no more. Our tastes in entertainment – until now – have been carefully tailored to the mainstream, because of previous economic constraints in making other content physically available. Scarcity once governed our consumption, now abundance is allowing us to take back control. Different audiences, comprising individuals spread across the world, can be targeted. Once treated as a mass population under the rule of the lowest-common-denominator, we are now being treated as individuals.
This is what Anderson explains in his article, ‘The Long Tail’. He argues that products in low demand – non-hits – can actually make up a larger market share than products in high demand – hits (hits being bestseller books, hit music, blockbuster movies). This is the current state of the entertainment economy, because of the numerous websites like Amazon.com, Rhapsody.com, and Netflix.com that are popping up all over the Internet. So, products that would have previously been ‘misses’ are now reaching their audiences. The sheer amount and diversity of content in these sites is what makes up the Long Tail, and is currently changing how individuals consume.
Exploration of personal taste is encouraged – recommendations based on the consumer’s previous choices help them expand their familiarity with product varieties and learn about what they like, rather than what the commercial world has limited them to liking. This is where niches thrive, and ‘misses’ find their market. We can see the social effect of this in the recent ‘indie’ lifestyle – it has become fashionable culture to embrace the alternative, the offbeat, the non-mainstream.
I find this idea exciting in there being such a huge platform for artists and exposure for creativity – works which would probably have otherwise not seen the light of day due to not being able to reach an audience / being nonviable to produce. In other words, artists now have great freedom – “almost anything is worth offering on the off-chance it will find a buyer”.
It works like this: far more content that’s available/accessible + cheaper content + content that’s easier to find = happy entertainment industry + happy consumers + cultural benefit (greater diversity).
Yeah. Maths.
Check out this vid of Chris Anderson explaining the whole concept – Identifying ‘The Long Tail’ – Chris Anderson
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[…] Ella does a good job on the ‘long tail’, getting the (economic – which is only one point of significance) importance of the long tail, that the slow sellers actually add up to more than the hits, simply because as the long tail shows, there is just so many things there in the tail. And she’s got a link to Chris Anderson’s video discussing this idea. […]