The " Long Tail" of digital distribution is a concept that will have a great impact on television, music , news/journalism and our culture. The "Long Tail" concept states that our previous markets for entertainment such as music dealt with a market that cut out the niche markets and only focused on the more popular once thought to be more profitable music. Digital distribution eliminates the cost of providing the opportunity to consumers to purchase an array of media's that are not provided by the current market. With the Internet and digital distribution these niche markets are now accounting for nearly 50% of the overall market and having a large impact on what is available to consumers.
This impact should alter the way in which the economic model for success by the media outlets should think about distribution and producing various types of media. In this model its not only the big hit that is important to the profitability and success of the media producing corporations but all the other little "misses" that are equally important. The idea of an infinite amount of "shelf space" both helps consumers and the content producers enormously by diversifying the content available. Shelf space that was once so contained and limited by big commercial retailers is now free to distribute media with out many limitations.
These concepts of infinite shelf space and the long tail can greatly impact our media culture and society. We think of our society as being a free democratic society one that allows information and ideas to pass freely amongst all people with out censorship. These two concepts provide both an economic incentive and ability or means distribute media that other wise would have been rare and obsolete to a broader consumer market. Our culture that has been so watered down and controlled now has the opportunity to make choices about what media is viewed. This gives the power back to the consumer and derails the content producer from filtering out media that could be equally as important to our society that would have been cut off by the previous formula for economic success.
Sources for this post from:
Chris Anderson article "The Long Tail ", Wiredhttp://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
Chris Anderson video " The Long Tail" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yku0GTrcuw&feature=fvw
Brian, this is an excellent an in depth analysis of the "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson, and I do agree the online retailers' and wholesalers' will even get more sales surpassing 50% of the overall sales in our country and overseas, too. I am a little older or a lot depending on who I compare myself to; but thing only thing that worries me about the internet is the lack of face-to-face contact among people in societies. I think that a lot of people under the age of thirty are so accustomed to communicating with other human beings with electronic media devices that they are not going to be ready to have a real conversation in their jobs or with their partners.
ReplyDeleteThis is a valid point Suzanne, however I feel that there is an undercurrent of face to face collaboration among artists that is fueled to counter act the lack of personal contact with people. The Internet is a great tool for establishing events and making collaborations possible that would not have been possible before. If the Internet dominates and becomes our only means of communication that could be a dangerous thing but if it is used a way of connecting people and these face to face encounters do not fall by the way side there is opportunities that were never possible before.
ReplyDeleteThe Internet has been a friend to me by bringing friends of long ago of 36 + years back into my life. I guess if we had never known of Facebook, myspace and all of the other paths to take to have conversations with people and share lives with people - then we would not miss it. But can you imagine if it were taken away now?
ReplyDeleteBrian, good job on your analysis!! I also believe that the internet is a great way to establish connections that would have other wise not been possible. I think that since the internet has come into play, that a lot of research does not come from books. It comes from the internet, I know growing up I did all of my papers from encyclopedias and books from the library. So I also agree with you in that in the internet becomes our only way of communication, that it could be bad.
ReplyDeleteBrian, this is a really good and concise analysis of the topic. In a few short paragraphs you were able to clearly explain the Long Tail and discuss critically how you feel it will impact the future of media. It's more important that we convey ideas than it is to write more words.
ReplyDeleteA few stylistic comments: it's always a good idea to give the reader an opportunity to either explore more or to check your resources. In old school media, that meant simply giving a citation. With Blogger it is easy to post the actual video you cited and allow the reader to watch it without having to leave your blog. Take advantage of the new media tools and go beyond what an ordinary print article could do.
Great work!! (but do be careful with grammar - there's a few typos and grammatical errors in this.)