The Long Tail of TV and Coming IP TV Revolution

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2005/04/the_long_tail_o.html' target='_blank'>http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2005/04/the_long_tail_o.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I'm a big fan of WIRED editor Chris Anderson's Long Tail thesis and his blog about the subject. The gist of it is that while a handful of popular shows/songs/movies make up the bulk of revenue for entertainment companies, often 50% or more of their total revenue can come from many people finding the less popular stuff, or the long tail. Thanks to various technologies enabled by the internet, like Amazon, Netflix, iTunes Music Store, it's now easier than ever to find that one old movie, song, or show you really loved and buy it (Amazon, NetFlix and iTMS all contain inventories no physical store could ever match)."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/tail.jpg" /> <br /><br />I agree, entertainment giants have focused more on the easy high demand properties. This makes sense since there is a certain fixed cost involved in any CD/DVD release that will need to be recoverable to make the release profitable. Pure digital distribution over the internet should drastically reduce the fixed costs and possilbly eliminate the middleman allowing the entertainment industry to make a profit from more niche products.

[ale_ers]

[i]... 50% or more of their total revenue can come from many people finding the less popular stuff, or the long tail...

The problem with this is that entertainment companies don't get this. There are tons of songs that are gathering dust somewhere that an intern could easily rip into a computer and make available through Napster or another music store. The online music stores have a good selection of current music, but it is generally hard to find the older stuff especially if it is less mainstream. This drives me crazy. I would love to be able to buy some of these more obscure songs.

To me this is the perfect area of revenue for these companies, they have little cost of development (maybe they have to work out new agreements with the artist to cover digital content, and they have to convert the songs), and they are not making much on the music in it's current state (people would be more apt to buy the $0.99 song they want than search out the whole CD if they can even find it). I think that music industry people are still not embracing digital distribution; they think that only the younger generation is their target market, therefore they should just sell new music.

Just to give you an example, I have been looking for a song called Vista... by Guadalcanal Diary. This is a song you can still hear on the radio often during a retro show, and it was quite popular in its day in the South. But you can't find it anywhere, not even Amazon. The CD is out of print. I have even been tempted to try a file sharing service.