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The Sometimes Fallacy of The Long Tail
There's been a lot of talk (maybe too much talk, to paraphrase Bono) about The Long Tail and how it changes everything about what people consume, how hits are made, what people want to hear, how everything big is small again -- but people have taken that perhaps too far as Lee Gomes contends in a recent blog post about hits. Lee's piece is well thought-out, and I think raises a very valid point that whereas there is value in the Long Tail idea, sometimes people take it too far and that "Hits" still count for a lot. His earlier piece is a more direct critique of The Long Tail and worth reading as well; we covered that piece about the Long Tail a couple weeks back.
Bad news for hype-driven marketing and economics people, but Pareto got it right in 1897!
I was pro Bono, until he broke up with Cher.
to make Slashdot look like a surrealist cult, talking about the "mysteries of the long tail."
I spend most of my time in bed, darling.
... all long tails that are big will eventually become small again?
Could there be ways of changing that - maybe keep them the same size for a longer time, or maybe even bigger?
I just read something about that.. can't remember where
"The Long Tail" is itself a bestseller?
...so exactly what are we to learn from that -- does that prove it right, or wrong?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I think the value add of the long tail is that the concept of "Hit" changes.
Where in a brick and mortar store, which suffers from space constraints so the ROI for any give stock has to be fairly high, the internet shines because the space constraints are looser and therefore the ROI for any given stock can be less and STILL be profitable.
If a Tower Records can only carry the top 10% of goods to be profitable, Tower Online can afford to carry the top 20% of goods and still be profitable. The top 10% will still sell, as always, but the next 10% may contribute up to 30% of the profits despite only being in the second percentile.
As efficiency increases, then each percentile after that becomes "more" profitable, relatively. If Best Buy online can afford to carry the top 30% and remain profitable, with the third percentile adding 11% of the profit and the second percentile adding 25% of the profit, they will sell more, necessarily, than Tower.
So all things being equal, the store with more inventory can sell more. The store with greater efficiency can afford to carry more.
GPL Deconstructed
most people behave in flocks, a few don't
that's it
it's not like the internet is going to come along and change simple human psychology:
1. the internet is not going to make less people behave in herds
2. the internet isn't going to make more people behave independently
take an old concept, spruce it up with a buzzword, and people think gold has just been discovered. pffft
perhaps the most ironic thing about the idea of the long tail is that the concept itself is now a mass media driven success story with a herd-like following
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you want to stretch the analogy to its logical limit, it shows that a business needs a solid base of popular sales and a ever expanding long tail of indie, cult, and oldie stuff that serve as loss leaders and marginal profit makers. You can have a successful business with a well connected short tail, but a fabulous business needs a longer tail. If the end falls off, you can still be ok! But if you loose the base of the tail, well...all you have is a big ass :-)
...for an article summary that uses so many words yet is totally void of any coherent detail.
AT&ROFLMAO
If folksonomies aren't tagged by the technorati, who or what will linkroll the mashups? The impact on the remixability of emergent systems will likely be severe.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
d00d, you'r gonna believe Wikipedia when they flub such common knowledge? Bono broke up with Cher and started the U2's a play on his previous hit single "I've got You Babe". He then went on to be a Senator to represent Mickey Mouse. He died in a ski accident and currently tours with the U2's and is involved in trying to stop poverty and stuff like that. Jees! Keep up with what's goin on, eh!
I lost interest when I thought the article had something to do with Long Phallac(ies) Tails or something.
wait... suppose I read it too fast.
Make "Strip Mall Heaven" a hit record...
http://cdbaby.com/soulamp
Free stuff here:
http://soul-amp.com/
Prove the analysts wrong...and make an obscure album by a obscure band made up of a Middle School Custodian, a Oracle DBA and Notes Programmer a hit...by simply popping for our disk on line. After all who wants all that money going to Ashlee Simpson or some American Idle clone.
It's 100% BuG FoG
"By Geeks for Geeks"
If you do we can make another one and maybe play a show in your town, clean your bathroom, Upgrade your Oracle 7 DB to 10g RAC and do what ever Lotus Notes freaks do. (I still don't know what he does and I have known him for years) Ok I suppose I should SAY SOMETHING about the article...Big corporate propaganda. The Long Tail freaked the wigs out. The old 80/20 business model is being melted by a 14 year old with a bic lighter and a iPod...Yeah baby destruction derby time...(I know you built car models and made dents) So they respond with a Jedi mind fook: "This is not the long tail you are looking for, move along." type of article. So all is well in Wellsville.
Ashlee is waiting.
Go to her now.
According to Casey Kasem, the U2's "are from england and who gives a $hit!"
I know the language the words are written in, but strung together like that they make no sense.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
what does the 'u' in BuG FoG stand for?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
... except you didn't mention AJAX, Web 2.0, Google, or trackback.
(P.S. Overly-zealous mods: please excuse the mention of Digg, its to make a joke.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
If anyone talks about the "long tail", ask them if they know how to integrate the area under the curve. The simplest number for evaluation purposes is the value for which half the area under the curve is before that point, and half is after. What's that number for movies? For books? For audio CDs? For iPod downloads?
Netflix says that 30% of rentals are from the top 50 films, so the halfway point is probably below 100.
This is a killer issue for companies that have huge hardware inventories. Consider Digi-Key. They have the broadest inventory of electronic parts in the industry, with over 70,000 parts. Which is a big win for them, because you can usually use them as your only supplier. So there's an Internet-based company that really does profit from the "long tail".
Digi-Key doesn't get much attention as an Internet company, but they're one of the most successful ones. They had online ordering early, and it works really well. Not just the web front end, which looks boring but has what users need, like the ability to search by component parameters. They have a near-complete collection of online data sheets. When a part you've ordered previously is about to be discontinued, you get an e-mail, so you can order a final supply before it goes away. And they have an incredibly effective order fulfillment operation. Orders entered before 7 PM (yes, PM) Central time ship the same day by FedEx. They actually do that, consistently. When you order from DigiKey, you get a confirmation e-mail when the order goes in, and another when it ships, with the FedEx tracking info. The shipping confirmation often comes in within fifteen minutes of placing the order. Now that's operating on Internet time. And that's for orders which might contain twenty different electronics parts in small quantities.
That's a real "long tail" company.
Let me see if I can break this down...
1. Mass media enables mass marketing.
2. Mass marketing leads companies to target "the sweet spot."
3. This pays off, and so reinforces the idea.
4. Companies become more and more focused on the center of the market.
5. The tails become under-served, the center gets over-served.
6. White Stripes, Pulp Fiction, Clerks, et al. do it for the artistic vision.
7. Hungry tails turn White Stripes et al. into overnight sensations.
8. Meanwhile, companies continue to pump the center.
9. Overfed center can't consume all the mass-market product.
10. Idiot misinterprets this as the the curve flattening, rather than companies over-serving one market and under-serving another.
11. Idiot publishes a pop-business book, which appeals to the mass of idiots that make up the heart of the market.
12. Some companies buy it, and rush out to the tails.
13. Some of these get burned, and so they backlash against Idiot.
14. Gomes writes a backlash piece.
15. With any luck, we can get the companies to rush back to the center, and start all over again - feeding the economic market for half-witted business books. (not casting aspursions at all business books, many of which are good, just the ones that are the business equivalent of Dr. Phil)
All the while, the market hasn't changed at all. It's a bell curve, same as it ever was. Gomes isn't so much sharp, as just not quite as idiotic as the heart of the pop-business market.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
People in general really have a problem with subtle points. If there isn't an "A IS GOOD, B IS BAD" in there somewhere, they'll simply convert the point into an "A IS GOOD, B IS BAD" point, and to hell with understanding what's actually being said.
The aspect of the "long tail" argument that I think makes sense is not that there will no more hits. In fact, the entire Long Tail argument is really predicated from the get-go that the popularity distribution will remain the same, albeit possibly with a scaled-down top end. (But even a hit that is 25% of the best hit of today would still be a big hit.) The point is that there is an untapped "long tail" that it is now possible to reach economically. The tail has always been there, but it has been difficult to make serving it work economically.
There will still be people who deal only in hits, it's just that there will also be people who deal only in the tail, and the latter may become very large, too, perhaps even Amazon-sized, whereas before this was essentially impossible.
Converting this into a "THERE WILL BE NO MORE HITS (BAD!), ONLY THE LONG TAIL (GOOD!)" is really missing the point entirely, and arguing against that is arguing against a strawman as far as I am concerned. (Of course, arguing against a person who is actually saying that means isn't a strawman.) The ratio may change, in fact I think it will change, but due to network effects, there will always be bona-fide hits.
Anybody counting the no.of hits on Google?
I'd really like to know..how many hits google has got..
My Blog | Badsh
someone truly independent could care less what the flock thinks
being emotionally pegged to the reactions of the flock, whether positively OR negatively (fear/ anger/ hate/ disgust), means you aren't truly independent of the flock
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I do not know why people argue about the existance of a long tail effect on the market. It is something that is coming about because markets are organic and always changing. Currently the diverse nature of retail and the ability to store almost an infinite product base and not use any(almost) physiscal space is causing the market to change. The Long Tail effect is just a phrase to describe what is going on. Yes there will always be popular products and music, etc. The point is that people are not all buying the same five staples anymore and products are growning more diverse.
The biggest point here to make is that we are attempting to understand what is already happening but just because we have a better understanding does not mean we can instantly capitalize on it. In fact the long tail is more of something that the markets just need to slowly adjust to.
Of course, we don't know and can't predict what they will be. Given the nature of human nature, hits will always be important. Who drives the hits is another question. My guess is that it won't be the riaa and the mpaa any more.
In recent times hits have been driven by whatever the riaa and mpaa have been willing to market. We did have a brief time when the audience drove the market and the riaa just had to go along for the ride. Artists did have a lot of say in what they would do. It speaks volumes that classic music from the 60s and 70s still sells a lot.
When the established market players pursue hits, that means they won't create products that they don't think will become hits. That causes them to ignore large segments of the market. The people in those market segments will go to the internet rather than swallowing the crap that the riaa tries to ram down their throats. That means a loss of revenue for the big companies. It may be enough of a drop to leave them much diminished or extinct.
So, yes there will always be hits but that doesn't mean that the riaa will be the ones profiting from them. Maybe it means that an artist with a minor hit will be able to make some decent money rather than being ripped off by his record company. (Rant. You can sell a million CDs and end up owing the record company money. I'd sure like to see that stop.)
You cannot have a long tail when the price of every song is the same. When the price of every song is the same, marketing will drive purchase choices.
But when unpopular songs only cost $.05, as opposed to $.99 for the "hits", there will be a lot of people who suddenly are driven, by price, to investigate, and (gasp) might even like, "unpopular" songs.
Even in the record stores, when I used to shop at them, I was always very glad of my affinity for classical music. My music was always in the bargain bin.
Of course all of this is up against the fact that much music, especially the "hits", are available for free on P2P networks.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You are assuming the reason things sell is they are offered. Most people in the consumer space have quite a different view - things sell because they are promoted.
Wrong. Things sell because they are wanted. The DIVx quasi-DVDs had the shit promoted out of them, but they tanked. No amunt of promotion could sell that stinking mess; no amount of promotion could convince prospective customers that it was worth their money - because it clearly wasn't.
They "sell the sizzle, not the steak" because the steak itself isn't enough; you have to fool people into thinking there's some value there that really isn't, or show them value that isn't readily apparent.
Pontiac used to have a commercial where they said "we sell excitement." I took that to mean that their brakes and handling were inferior to other car manufacturers. Meanwhile, their "exciting" cars wouldn't sell, because it was the '70s and people wanted economy. Japan ate American Auto's lunch.
Promotion only works when your promotion can convince a prospective buyer that he or she wants the item you're promoting.
It's funny then how eMusic, despite only exploiting the 'long tail', is the number 2 music store behind iTMS - easily beating all the online music stores selling the popular stuff. Of course, that might have something to do with eMusic being the only music store other than iTMS which sells music that will play on an iPod.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I was surprised to see that folks stuck to hits when Rhapsody scanned their usage lists. I think many sites are trying to entice folks to follow the "sounds like" and "genre" trails for new music, but in the end Promotion does indeed play a role.
Promotion on the internet may best come from "word-of-mouth" sources, where hot links of the week propogate through blogs and link-lists and such. The SNL rap-spoof is just such an example from earlier this year. Every past popular web meme is just such an example. I think podcasts(audio & video) are underrated, since the future of web may be to "leave the chair" and use portables to continue the experience.
Perhaps in the future a portal will present a Busker-style downloadable playlist of music, completely copyright free "for personal use and sharing" - and then simply ask for donations that go directly to the artist. Popularity and payment mixed into one. For the large portion of music history, this is how such performance careers worked anyway. Then at least a band could make use of the File Sharing networks as a promotion layer, rather than constantly having them viewed as evil.
Like the Long Tail purports, lowest overhead can make the most profit from the smaller market segments. I cannot see a lower operating margin than online distribution from the artists themselves. The sacrifice is promotion: Labels fight hard for airtime, shelf space, billboard pasteup and DJ chatter. There is a strong argument that "the music world is full of crap and the public wants someone to cull the list for them." But perhaps if these concepts of web meme, genre/artist linking and a modern payment system all converge, things will change.
Long tail enthusiasts: The integral from just below the median to infinity is more than 50%!
Long tail rejectionists: The integral from zero to just above the median is more than 50%!
Will we ever know who is to triumph?!?!
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Most of the examples given are highly influenced by outside advertising and trends, of course they are going exhibit long tails because they are driven by mass media and a huge blitz of advertising when any given movie, show, song, book, or album is released. The only example cited that is most independant of mass marketing is youtube, and of course it exhibits a long tail because of its own indexing system. If youtube didn't have most popular indexes to go from and only served you random videos the tail would be much shorter.
An analysis of the 5.1 million videos uploaded to the site as of July 25 shows that the top 10% best-played of them made up 79% of the 7.56 billion total plays, with the top 20% making up 89%."
A tail will exist for everything, in any given subset of objects the better ones are going to be used/viewed/accessed more often. Since everything is bound by the 4th dimension of time, new objects will be more popular than old, at least when looked at in the 4th dimension.
...lasted 1 minute. ZING!!
Usually when we talk about hits in the context of the web we are talking about page impressions, this guy seems to be talking about best sellers and box office hits. I had to read half way through the article before I understood that the guy is simple prattling bullshit. How can series of vague figures presented to support a self evident truth of online distribution be news to anyone?
But in our case, pun aside, it's not the vast numbers in the "middle" that are interesting.
We tend to focus on the cluster of cases (which either is the long tail itself of a distribution curve), or controls (the middle of the curve where most people are).
So, from our viewpoint, the "long tail" is more interesting than the "bump in the snake".
From the study of the extremes, we derive knowledge that lets us treat the people in the middle.
Then further study allows us to fine tune that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If we're talking about music sales, one of the reasons why I don't buy corporate music much is that it's all about the long tail - they don't want to make the music I want to hear.
And hence why so many people want to download music they do want to hear.
More than 80 percent of the top 20 playlist I hear is total carp.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
16. ?????????
17. Profit!
BTW, I had no clue whatever what "The Long Tail" was, so I looked it up. What I suspected was true, according to Wiki - yuppified mumbling about jack shit.
"Ninety percent of everything is crap"
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
- but we make up for it in volume!
(Web 2.0 my ass)
Although I actually did work for a web company that was cash-flow-positive, once. Then they got sold to VC's and had to stop making money.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
...article about?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The Fat Tail is a new economic theory which has supplanted the little long tail thing. Check it out here, but I warn you, it is complicated. http://www.rabbitbites.com/archive/longtail.html
>Are you an idiot, or do you just play one on the Internet?
Are you a rude prick, or do you just play one when posting anonymously on the Internet?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
They do all that is listed above, and they do it from Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Google it and you'll see that it is about as remote as you can get from any North American metropolitian centers.
All their electronic components have to be trucked into Thief River Falls, sorted, counted, catagorized, and stored. Then the orders come in: 32 of a73907-30948-30, 2 of 39047038-alkd39-08, 1 of 90892938-dkfjk-29, etc...
Thousands of orders, every day.
I can't believe that they actually have that many people in Thief River Falls, MN to go around and find the components for each order for the 70,000 listed. But they do manage to get the job done.
Then every order gets shipped out again from TRF to the remotest regions of North America. They must love northern Minnesota. Were it me, I would shift the entire operation to a more centrally located location. As FedEx has done by locating in Memphis, TN or all companies clustered around DFX (Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas) airport.
those communication technologies you've mentioned have served to homogenize and herd people even more
in 1850, if someone had a hit song in new york city, you can bet san francisco wouldn't know about it. heck, if someone had a hit song in one neighborhood of new york city another neighborhood a mile away might never hear it
now? madonna has a hit song on the charts in london at the same time in tokyo and new york city. talk about bigger herds!
same with the printing press, same with movies, same with the tv
in fact, people said computers would lead to less paper use... makes sense, right? in fact, paper use has increased with computers in the office
people said the internet would lead to the death of cities since everyone would telecommute to work... makes sense? in fact, urban areas have seen a red hot real estate market since the introduction of the internet
and even though i think the internet will have no effect on herd like behavior, if it does, it will be to INCREASE herd like behavior, if anything: take jib jab for example, or "all your base are belong to us" or any other viral online meme... it allows for mass marketing of what would previously be disconnected subcultures, it allows for economic and efficient mass marketing of tiny groups, something that would be cost prohibitive before
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the fat tail: http://www.rabbitbites.com/archive/longtail.html
uh, why is ANYONE listening to what bono says about world affairs? if we listen whatever to bono has to say, we should be listening to what chad lowe has to say...
Just be sure you understand that the classical music you bought wasn't actually discounted. Its price-structure is such that it is designed to be sold for less, not because they had to lower the price just to sell it. I have a degree in the music industry and never understood this until one of my professors who worked for Madacy as an engineer used to produce albums of this nature and explained it to me.
Libertas in infinitum