The long Tail seems to be a great theory to explain what is going on in the world of media. In the music world it seems to fit best. There are millions of artist around the world who are trying to create that one hit to be discovered but in todays world there is no need to break into the main stream. Over the last 20 to 30 years indie music has grown largely due to the internet where blogs cover the trendy new artist such as www.gorillavsbear.net or the well known pitchfork.com. Although there have been some amazing indie artist that have emerged,there are aslo even more awful ones. Which brings me to the point that i feel like the “long tail” might be good for those ganging success but its harder for music labels, the artist, as well as me the consumer to sift through all the stuff thats out there.Therefore gems go unnoticed and musicians miss there big break.
According to Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer1 there are more than 28 million songs on the iTunes Store. Assuming that each song has an average length of three minutes, it would take about 160 years to listen to every single song in this huge library. Therefore it is absolutely impossible to overlook this sheer mass of music in order to find songs you might actually like. As a result, it is extremely important to have filters that narrow down your selection – such as recommendations, search engines or reviews. These are the mechanisms that make the long tail actually work. Without people hearing, talking or reading about certain niche products, these niches would not draw any attention – and therefore they would not even evolve.
1 http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120425itunes
I agree, the long tail fits best with the music industry. I never thought about it much with indie music but how do you think it’s hard for the record label?