Long Tail Debunked?

[mojobone]

Economists crunch the numbers; the (sad) verdict is in.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07 ... print.html

[flyingtadpole]

Jan 4, 2009, 1:19am, mojobone wrote:Economists crunch the numbers; the (sad) verdict is in.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07 ... .surprises me not at all. The first CD I turned out was created simply to get thre tracks into digital distribution and sit in the Long Tail. Going by the number of downloads I was picking up around the place (this was a few years ago) I thought that the Long Tail buys might be reasonable. Then I learned that the downloading public doesn't buy. And the buying public didn't then listen to downloads. I know that's now changed a bit, but it still holds, largely. Anyway, the tracks that got digitally bought weren't the ones I thought would sell...And then I found that local physical CD sales were where I was going to get my weekly cappucino from, provided I kept production runs short and homemade everything but still looking good and sounding OK. One cappucino a week does not a living make. (Sorry, currently two a week. I'm rich, I'm rich!).There I would have sat in a very thin and weight-reducing long tail, except for Taxi coming along (due to bird-watching Hummingbird). So now it's a five-year run to get at least some things up and playing and generating a minor royalty stream. But I don't kid myself I could live from that and record sales, not without live gigging, teaching and grafting.I think the Long Tail allows a lot more to be floating around, but I also think the increasing amount of free listening on myspace and the rest will just make the LOng Tail sales worse still. The best idea remains the old MP3.com pay-(peanuts)-per-play covered by advertising.

[mojobone]

Indeed. Here's a prescient paper from (gasp!) 2004:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23 ... e_keynote/

[matthoggard]

Great links Reverend.I have a belief that those of us stuck in the tail have the oppurtunity to create or use our own means/methods of getting our "product" to sell. Its the old do what everone else is doing axiom. This goes for the head as well as the tail.When Henry Ford made one kind of car he sold THOUSANDS. When competitors started selling different kinds of cars they sold MILLIONS and now TRILLIONS!10 years into serious internet popularity and I think that we are still not using this medium to its fullest extent. MASS MARKETING. If the record labels wont do it, its up to us to do it ourselves. We should spend twice as many hours marketing our product as we do creating it.With the internet we have a low overhead means of advertising and access to millions of end users.Thanks Mojo for the shot in the arm!M~