The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Last year Chris Anderson wrote an article that touched a lot of nerves and it was the most cited article in Wired magazine in 2005. Now the author has fleshed out his ideas into a book that will have tongues wagging and businessmen frantically calling meetings after it comes out in the middle of July. The book is called The Long Tail: The Radical New Shape of Culture and Commerce. The author spoke at the American Libraries Conference in New Orleans on last Monday to a packed house.
Anderson began by declaring the era of megahits over. Picture a graph with a line that looks like a steep downhill slope followed by a long gentle decline. At the top of the hill are the most popular books, CDs, movies and such and the long slope represents everything else – all the niche markets. On March 21, 2000 Nsync released their album No Strings Attached and sold several million CDs in two days. The record, which will probably never be broken, is the Mount Everest of 20th century consumer culture. While CD sales have dropped some since, Anderson documents that there have been 50% fewer hits, defined by the number of gold records. The top of the hill isn’t as high as it used to be, and the slope goes on forever. The long tail never reaches zero.
All two million songs available on iTunes have been purchased at least once. On Rhapsody, #1 sells a bunch, but #25,000 is downloaded over 600 times a month. Wal-Mart carried 700 new music titles last year. According to Anderson, Wal-Mart ignores 50% of the market. With iTunes, Amazon and other Internet retailers, all of that slope is now profitable. We’re in the era of unlimited consumer choice, which has extended this long tail. Anderson predicts that our children will never know what the phrase ‘out of print’ means. All of this also explains why our public often asks us for books that we don’t own.
The TV market is the same – 70% of all households watched I Love Lucy in 1950’s. The audience figures for today’s top rated show, CSI, wouldn’t have put it in the top ten 15 years ago. It’s not that shows were better (or worse) then. The top 4 networks combined now snag less than half of the audience on any given night and we have an infinite number of channels. The long tail effect occurs anytime you have efficient distribution channels.
Any library applications to this? You bet, but this post has already gone on too long. I’ll leave you with this from Anderson’s lecture:
Five long tail lessons
1. Don’t confuse limited distribution with shared taste
2. Everyone deviates from the mainstream somewhere
3. One size no longer fits all
4. The best stuff isn’t necessarily at the top
5. The mass market is becoming a mass of niches
The author’s blog: thelongtail.com
