THE LONG TAIL

The Long Tail



The Long Tail

Introduction

With great anticipation, it is pre-ordered Chris Anderson's The Long Tail two months ago. The difference is vast between those, as it is the difference between the understanding the market forces or being subject to them.

Summary

In the opening chapters of the book I had many shared experiences, growing up in the 80's and being a fan of the British New Wave and Punk music that crept into the top 40, but wasn't the "hit" music. Trying to find the "good music" was next to impossible unless you were able to go to a large city and find some seedy record store that was in tune enough to carry some of the hard-to-find music, like Clash and Depeche Mode imports.

A quarter of the way into his book The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand, Anderson explains, "The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail."

What drives this Long Tail and the niches that populate it? Anderson identifies three 'forces'.

More stuff is being produced. Technology and the internet make it cheaper and easier to record and distribute your own songs, publish your own writings and so on. This lengthens the tail.

There is better access to niches, again thanks to the reach and economies on the net. This fattens the tail.

Search and recommendations connect supply and demand. This drives business from hits to niches.

All this is good stuff. Anderson suggests that we all have niche interests; it's just the constraints of mass media that have focused us on the ...