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Long Tail theory contradicted as study reveals 10m digital music tracks unsold
[Quote:]
The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products – and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets.
But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this “long tail” theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.
As far as I can read it, this actually confirms that the long tail works perfectly. After all, the Long Tail works on the hypothesis that if a middleman can profitably keep an immense inventory of anything that might sell can satisfy a significant part of the market. That’s exactly what happened. Also, Tthe long tail will not be proved or disproved based on how many songs sell. It will be proved or disproved based on how many songs sell that otherwise wouldn’t have even been put up for sale. It isn’t about “quality”. It’s about subjectivity.
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I agree with John. If 10 out of 13 are not sold, it means 3 are. And people chose those from 13. I’d go for that any day of the week over having to select 1 of 2. A long tail is about choice not about volume. Unless you have some way to predict exactly what people will like, and you can make their choices for them. Which is the wet dream of anyone that competes.
The other problem I have found is the quality of those downloadable files are poor quality.(very low bit rate) I find that I end up ripping my own cd music so that I can have a decent sounding file. In additon, gone are the days of albums when almost every track was good. That is the exception now.