Chris Anderson of Wired magazine has a great piece on the new economics of entertainment, called ‘The Long Tail.’ In it, he explores the release of creative product from physical and local distribution models (movie theaters, record stores, and such), that tended to promote hits and blockbusters over breadth of content. Says Anderson:
Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced. Not enough screens to show all the available movies. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created, and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out through either of those sets of slots.This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.
That abundance and deep catalog come in many forms — most of them on the Internet, but not all. Apple’s iTunes music store now carries over 1 million recordings, from classical to indie to mainstream pop, and now even out of print recordings. Netflix, the movie mail-order system, offers over 25,000 titles to its members, with documentaries, old classics, odd favorites, and specials that would never find their way onto the Blockbuster shelves.
Anderson’s article title, ‘The Long Tail,’ is a reference to the less popular side of the purchasing curve. If you map sales of compact discs, for example, there’s a huge spike at the top…where around 20 percent of all releases earn around 80 percent of all sales (aka, the 80/20 rule, I’ve written about this power-law relationship before). Distributors limited by geography (like movie theaters) or physical space (like Wal-Mart) must focus on the high-volume portion of that curve to maximize their earnings. A compact disc that sells less than 100,000 units isn’t worth the six cubic inches it would occupy on Wal-Mart’s shelf.
The ‘long tail,’ on the other hand, is the slowly downsloping portion of the curve that moves away from these top 20 percent — the remaining compact discs that sell less than 100,000 but more than zero. The new distribution models, unfettered by traditional space constraints, make even these less popular offerings profitable. And, as it turns out, people want to hear and see this stuff more often than you think. Says the article:
Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).
Is this useful for cultural managers or arts organizations? Yes and no. It’s certainly useful as background and context on the world they are working in, and the nature of cultural consumer transactions. But so many arts organizations face the very same structural challenges of record stores or movie theaters — they are local, drawing from a fixed population within around 30 miles, and they operate in the physical world (theater, museum, gallery, festival) that allows only limited selection of what to present, perform, or produce. Unless they exist in an extremely dense market (a major metropolitan area), the laws of economics will confound them, and lure them toward the popular spike rather than the ‘long tail.’
Anderson’s article smacks a bit of utopianism, as many technology articles do…productions that live in the long tail still have fixed costs to cover and on-going bills to pay. But, still, it’s nice to know that obscure songs and niche films have a place in this new world, and have an audience, no matter how small. Perhaps part of our job in the nonprofit world is to make sure those odd and unpopular choices are available to be discovered.
