You are, of course, familiar with the Long Tail principle – Chris Anderson’s now famous idea that attempts to explain what happens to hits and niche products when things like the scarcity of retail shelf space go out the window thanks to the internet.
There was an extremely good and important article, which was then developed into a fairly good book (which kind of amounted to the article with a bit more colouring-in and some more examples), and has continued as a very interesting blog.
In short: as more products become available (thanks to the internet), more people check out what’s going on down the shallow end of the curve – the tail. The tail lengthens and expands.
But what most people seem to have missed is the fact that this is not some announcement of a brave new world for the independent niche musician. In fact, the extent to which this has been misunderstood virtually amounts to some sort of mass self-deception based solely on a wildly creative interpretation of the text and a bucketload of wishful thinking.
There are two categories of helpful that the Long Tail principle can be to the independent artist: marginally helpful, and freakishly helpful. The first is extremely common. The latter is extremely rare.
To understand these two scenarios, it’s important to understand what the Long Tail is and is not.
The Long Tail is… an economic principle that reveals a strategy that can be used by creative businesses: sell less of more. That is to say, release a large amount of things that sell in small quantities. To date (and much to everyone’s surprise) the major record labels have grasped this far more quickly than the independents.
To release as many titles by as many artists as possible is the lesson that independent businesses can draw from the Long Tail. Reissues, rarities, outtakes, concert recordings, deleted recordings… as many things as you can find. Because the fixed and marginal costs of getting things up for sale online are so low, it only takes a few sales of each item to make it worth the effort.
The Long Tail is not… the death of the hit. While the niche market expands because the availability of products is greater and greater – to the extent that the sum economic value of all non-hits combined is greater than the sum economic value of all hits combined – that doesn’t mean that the number of hits decreases, or that Britney Spears goes away.
The Long Tail raises this very simple observation about reduced-friction release and near-zero costs when you no longer have to manufacture 1000 CDs to begin selling. It doesn’t say that therefore you will sell 1000 copies without having any expenses.
Critiques of the Long Tail, based on evidence of a growing market for hit products, simply misunderstand The Long Tail.
Marginal helpfulness
To the independent artist, then, it’s helpful that the Long Tail phenomenon exists because it means that if there’s a chance to sell a few copies of your work, there are no longer any barriers in your way to stop you selling those few copies. That won’t make you a millionaire, but it’s better than nothing.
The Long Tail wasn’t promising you stardom, or even a decent wage.
Collectively, those little bits could be added together so that some entrepreneurial sort who wanted to release an awful lot of those small sellers could take a tiny margin, which could be economically significant over hundreds or even thousands of releases.
Freakish helpfulness
Sometimes when you make something available, people like it out of proportion to your expectations. Removing the barrier to entry (ie: no longer having to justify pressing 1000 CDs in order to ‘release’) means that you can take a punt with much lower risk – and sometimes those risks pay off.
And the great thing about the internet is that something that would not have even seen the light of day under different circumstances can become a runaway success simply because people like it, talk about it and send it to their friends.
This doesn’t happen often, and everything has to be in pretty much perfect alignment in order for that to work – but it does happen. And what that does is to take something that would have been part of the long tail of low sale items, and catapult it up to the realm of the hit. And that’s pretty cool.
So – is the Long Tail good for musicians? A little bit. Not really. Occasionally it’s great, but on the whole, it’s hardly the panacea for the struggling artist a lot of people were pretending it was (or getting cross that it wasn’t).
Is it good for the independent music sector? Absolutely – if the independent music sector would actually grasp the concept and use it, then it would be enormously beneficial.
So far, I haven’t really seen that happen.
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[...] Andrew Dubber smash any delusions I may have held that the Long Tail was in anyway a good thing for small time hucksters like you and me. That makes two useless tales [...]
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[...] Andrew Dubber well and truly K.O.’d any delusions I may have held that the Long Tail was in anyway a good thing for small time hucksters like you and me. That makes two useless tales [...]
11 Comments
Kevin Kelley has written some interesting posts about the long tail. Start with his post “1,000 True Fans” http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php
(I don’t know if putting a linkie-poo here will tag this comment as spam). (On the other hand I know for a fact that if I add more hyperlinks to this comment Mr. Akismet will send this comment straight to hell, so I will just encourage you to look for the follow-up thoughts Mr. Kelley has posted at the same site.) (Can you tell I like parenthetical comments?) (I like your website, by the way, and try to apply your ideas in a very different area–namely the promotion of boutique professional service firms such as mine.) (That’s about it for parenthetical asides for the time being, wouldn’t you say?) (Yes I would).
@philiphodgen
There’s a very good HBR article about this issue too… I think it’s this one:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0807H
Well worth the cost of downloading.
Very good analysis, Andrew.
The long tail works best for those who sell less of more. It works best for companies like iTunes, amazon, cdbaby etc.
For an independent artist the question is: How many tracks must be in circulation to earn enough to make a living? 10 Albums won’t be enough I think.
It’s about releasing whatever you got. Yes, and maybe a little bit of luck can be helpful, too!
Good post Andrew.
Phil Hodgen mentioned Kevin Kelley’s 1,000 True Fans Model – this article completely changed my perspective on things.
I do think the Long Tail is good for indies, and will become more so with time. But only for the indie artists who are in it for the long haul. Indies still must do all the necessary leg work that they’ve always had to do. The LT offers no short cuts.
As you mentioned in your e-book the music biz is changing (not changed). The LT concept is young and widely misunderstood and misrepresented. The most interesting side of the LT is the filtering of it. Last FM or Amazon with their recommendation engines that help people connect the dots between their unique or obscure tastes and the unique or obscure artists who satisfy those tastes.
As these Last FM-type systems establish themselves as cultural norms, I think (or possibly just hope) there will be a resurgence of interest, from the consumer side, in music. I just wrote about this in yesterdays Studio Manifesto entry. The post is called “Should Bands Worry About Over Saturation?” here is the link
http://www.studiomanifesto.ca/WP01/should-bands-be-worried-about-over-saturation/
Andrew I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on the 1,000 True Fans Model.
Lastly Seth Godin has defined a third area of the Long Tail – the intermediary between the Tip and the Tail called the Dip. Here is a link to that
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/the-long-tail-t.html
Andrew,
Fantastic insight, as usual.
Anthony
Great post Dubber. I am continually fascinated by the long tail, and how “niche” works can be marketed to be more engaging to fans and profitable to artists. While there will always be “hits”, the collective power of long tail artists should be able to rival the majors. Think: Merlin.
But the problem is that there hasn’t been a powerful aggregation of long tail artists (i hope nobody argues that Myspace has done that) that has enabled them to effectively punch above their weight. Creative Commons is a great example of massive stockpile of long tail works that haven’t been properly monetized…and I’m not talking about just selling tracks, which obviously not the answer. I love CC licenses, but who’s going to figure out a creative way to monetize them for musicians? CCmixter sure didn’t.
I wrote a blog post on whether the long tail is good for musicians and how it can be leveraged to actually make some musicians money.
Check it out: http://evolvingmusic.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/long-tail-is-flat/
You could probably do a whole post about file sharing and the long tail. In a nutshell, it goes something like this…
In the days before CDs could easily be copied, every member of a group of friends might buy a copy of the latest CD by the current big name artist. Nowadays, though, only one or two of them would buy it and pass it around while the rest would buy something else to share. Why buy 10 copies of something by a filthy-rich megastar when we can have it anyway and could instead buy something by a lesser act who probably appreciates the additional sales more?
When downloading and interacting with others on a filesharing network it’s the same effect. If you’re like most music lovers there’s probably way more music you’d like to have than you can afford to buy on CD. You’d be less likely to download something that could easily be found online. Quite possibly, you’d still buy CDs, just not the same ones; rather than buy more of the latest top sellers, you’d buy more backlist titles and music by more obscure acts.
It’s not hard to see how this results in less sales of the “Hits” and more sales further out the long tail. Some have speculated that it’s an effect that the recording industry is fighting against. Their business model is based on the idea that a large percentage of sales are concentrated in the hits. Filesharing drives more sales out to the long tail. They dislike Internet radio (and to a lesser extent, satellite radio) for the same reason – they expose more listeners to more obscure music and drive sales out the long tail. Much of their legislative and royalty lobbying seem geared toward what is likely a losing battle to drive more music consumers back toward the hits.
I agree that the long tail is no pancea for independent musicians, but I think you’re downplaying the positive aspects a bit.
That companies are recognizing the long tail makes a huge difference for independent artists. Examples like CD Baby, iTunes… someone making music in their basement now has access to all sorts of distribution channels that were once only available to those with record contracts. The whole “democratization of the tools of production and distribution” bit… The companies building business models off the long tail help enable artists in the long tail to build new business models of their own.
I mean, it’s definitely no magic bullet and it’s very easy to overstate the impact (which I may be even guilty of now), but I think saying it’s only “a little bit… not really” good for musicians is an understatement.
Whilst an interesting observation – I’m not sure how the long tail really helps the independent artist in general – other than allowing them to go from making no money to possibly making a little money.
A record label with a large collection of these types of artist my fare well, but I think the real benefit of the long tail to the independent musician is allowing those doing something truly special to move up the tail, without the financial backing of a major label.
A sales office, such as a real estate office, works on the principle that it is not necessarily important that each sales person be fantastically successful so long as the over-arching institution sells enough properties (widgets, etc.). Before anyone employed the idea of a “long-tail” in this context, numerous sales structure of tangible products recognized this aspect of the phenomenon. Just as the individual line realtor does not necessarily profit from the “sell fewer of more”, the “sell less of more things” nature of digital IP for the artist suggests that the “long tail” is, as you suggest, misunderstood in terms of its upside impact for artists.
At the same time, the generic topic of the “long tail” is merely a projection as to the results of an unclear process–the change and arguable diminishing of corporate hegemony over availability of music media. It’s this change, rather than the “long tail” concept, that makes all the difference. It’s this change which offers every chance of Heaven and a few sad chances of Hell to the independent artist.
As a musician I can say that I am surprised and flattered that people would buy my stuff in the U.S., England, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands.
But still it doesn’t add up to much because its one here and one there and you need to sell more than that.
But at least its given me hope for my dreams and I’m just getting started.
Will I become a big star or at least earn a living at music? We shall see.
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