Week 7 - The Long Tail

As I still don’t fully understand the long tail, but as Chris Anderson describes it: “You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre”

So as I see it, you are better off selling a lot of singular niche or unique titles, rather than a few of the more “popular” titles like Britney Spears. It’s sort of ironic I guess, Britney Spears is popular, but then again, so are the niche items, according to sales. I’m still a little confused...

Wait, more people are into niche than they are into popular?

“Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits.” (Anderson, 2004)

Oooooh! so I was sort of on the right track!

Moving right along... I get a little nostalgic when it comes to the tech and commerce of the 90’s. I tried finding a cassestte recorder so I could make actual mixtapes, and I never pass the record section in op shops (yes, I’m an opshopper). My behviour reflects the trend that as we are given more and more options, more ways to buy the popular, we find our tastes are in the niche and the vintage.

The rise of the hipster, which I think I have mentioned on this blog, is nurturing the Long Tail. A hipster loves everything old/“vintage” and ironic. Today’s hipster listens to his Walkman rather than his iPhone (which is in his pocket) wears tweed he bought not from the opshop, but from American Apparel, and rides a fixie that he spent thousands refurbishing to make it look older.

(click here for the evolution of the hipster, and see how they nurture the Long Tail market)

I’m saying that it’s now fashionable to have old and unique things. The eigthies saw “Freaks” (weeds smoking, army jacket toting rebellious types on the fringe of society) revelling in the niche of unique stylings, as did the 90’s. Now it’s everybody with a little quirky obsession that they bought from etsy.com. I’m saying there’s money in it.

While there is money in selling copious amounts of popular crap you could get in hot dollar, you can just as much, even more in marketing to the wide publics taste for the underground.

Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10 [URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html]