A requirement for my Issues in Cyberspace class was to read Chris Anderson's WIRED magazine article, The Long Tail. With it being such a mainstream thing, today's technology and the access to it have become a large business. Chris Anderson's long tail theory shows how hugely the tv, democratic, music and journalism industries will be affected by this digital distribution.



Chris Anderson's "The long tail" basically means something will be available for everyone no matter how odd your tastes. He discussed the Paretto rule in the youtube video in which its an 80-20 ratio but in reality it's 99% that the top online companies will rent or sell. He discusses how hit and miss are on same equal economic footing and that when you add it up, the biggest profits are in the smallest sales.

With the long tail comes 3 rules that must be followed. In the WIRED article the first rule discussed is "embrace niches" which means make everything available. The fact that offering anything is smart because even if there's that small chance someone will buy it, there is still that small chance which once again can add up. For example: Netflix has a much larger selection of say documentaries then Blockbuster, it's because of this that more people are going to choose Netflix over Blockbuster. A larger selection of niches means larger consumer satisfaction and better business profits and service wise.The second rule is to cut the price in half then lower it again. It's just the truth that the lower prices are, the more people buy of something. Smart pricing can add up to the same as an album at a large store. Chris discusses how with older content, because of smart pricing the content ended up actually making money back. Also when it comes to illegal downloading the price can be free but at a cost of poor quality and downloading viruses onto your computer.

If prices are low enough, consumers would rather spend the low amount of money then incurring the risks. The third rule discussed is to help me find it! Recommendations have become effective marketing for new and old artists. As I recal, there's a discussion how after researching an artist, alternate artists come up. The idea is that people will look at these other artists and enjoy their music and purchase it. Products that one person may like but several hundred other people don't still should have adequate information of how to go about finding it becuase it could be a sale. In the youtube video, discussed is the power law which basically goes like this: small numbers add up to large numbers. This chart will give a better understanding:

This chart shows how the long tail (yellow part) is a result because Rhapsody carries more rare music then say Walmart or Target or some other store and in return gets more business. Amazon and Netflix have examples above as well.

This graph shows that this is the way of the future period. Media outlets are going to have to change their "niche reaching" if they want to stay in business, it's as simple as that. Why would a consumer who likes rare or different music stick with only companies that sell only the hits, the answewr is they wouldn't. They will go with the company that can meet their need.

In my opinion infinite shelf space can only help both the consumer and producer. It all goes back to the fact of options. With infinite shelf space this means that the consumer can pick virtually anything they want movie or music wise and get it. When there's no limit on what the company can carry, in a sense they then have the availability to carry everything.



Check out these sites/images that I used in my blog, just click on the link to see more:

Chris Anderson's WIRED article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yku0GTrcuw&feature=fvw

http://www.consultbrain.com/wp-images/posts/longtail.gif

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/sni/lowres/snin19l.jpg