{"id":921,"date":"2006-07-19T09:06:35","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T16:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/07\/the_longer_narrative_on_the_lo\/"},"modified":"2006-07-19T09:06:35","modified_gmt":"2006-07-19T16:06:35","slug":"the_longer_narrative_on_the_lo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/the_longer_narrative_on_the_lo.php","title":{"rendered":"The longer narrative on the &#8221;long tail&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/000162.php\">back in 2004<\/a> about the idea of &#8221;the long tail,&#8221; advanced by <i>Wired<\/i> magazine&#8217;s Chris Anderson. The gist of his theory was that emerging (primarily Internet) distribution models were dramatically altering the revenue potential of non-blockbuster material. In other words, while space-limited retailers like Walmart and Best Buy had to focus on selling massive quantities of very few things (ie, Madonna CDs, blockbuster movies, best-selling books), there was a world of opportunity in selling low quantities of lots and lots of things (specialized music, fringe films, niche or low-selling books).<\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1401302378\/bolzcenter-20\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/images\/longtail.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"200\" alt=\"The Long Tail\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\"><\/a>The &#8221;long tail&#8221; refers to the recurring graph of sales in a given industry, where the top few items sell like hotcakes and grab most of the total revenue, and the remaining 80 to 90 percent trail off in a long tail, among them sharing the lesser percentage of revenue. Anderson suggested that as the cost of storing and distributing content approaches zero (it&#8217;s only disk space and bandwidth, after all), there would be increasing opportunity to mine the non-blockbuster, and that some of the wind would go out of the blockbuster-focused marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve often browsed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.longtail.com\/the_long_tail\/\">Anderson&#8217;s weblog on the subject<\/a>, since it&#8217;s so essential to the arts. Now he&#8217;s <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1401302378\/bolzcenter-20\">published a book<\/a> that&#8217;s at the top of my reading list (if I ever get to actually read). Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/critics\/books\/articles\/060710crbo_books1\">a review in the <i>New Yorker<\/i><\/a> if you want the quick perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted back in 2004 about the idea of &#8221;the long tail,&#8221; advanced by Wired magazine&#8217;s Chris Anderson. The gist of his theory was that emerging (primarily Internet) distribution models were dramatically altering the revenue potential of non-blockbuster material. In other words, while space-limited retailers like Walmart and Best Buy had to focus on selling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"category-readings","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}