I’m reading a great book right now. “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson. A good friend, John Rhulin got me to check it out.
Basically the book pushes the idea that with the modernization of information and access to niche markets though advancing technologies society is providing unique avenues for sales of lesser known products. The best example is hits in the music industry. Basically in the stone age (pre-intenet), only the hits made it because of access to shelf space, radio time, and the music industry’s profit motives. In the age of the web, CD buring, etc., anyone with a great sound can achieve a following. The author got access to Rhapsody’s download history, which gives some very interesting data to support that a lot (40%) of their downloads happen outside of the music industry’s “hit list” - the stuff that’s stocked in stores. Thank god. I can’t stand radio. I haven’t listened to reg radio in 5 or 6 years, since getting Sirius. Even now with Sirius I’m getting annoyed because my fav techno stations there play a “hit list”. Are we all doomed to our own compartmentalization?
It’s interesting to think where these ideas fall into a system like Collar Free. If the growth of selection in books was first (the biggest offline book retailer in the world carried 175k books, Amazon almost instantaneously took it to well over a million), then music (Rhapsody took the 25k titles available at Wal Mart online, and then added millions more, and continues to grow by the second), then video (youtube). Is clothing next? Does clothing define us as much as our reading or our music? Does it define us more? What if a community around clothing and fashion grew to the size of a rhapsody or youtube? Would we be pushed into our own niches, would the outliers dissapear? Would the freak on the street blend into the rest of the daily crowd? Would everyone have a unique choice? Would every designer have a shot at fame and success?
Anyway The Long Tail just come out in paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Revised-Updated-Business/dp/1401309666/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216191234&sr=8-2
-Peace
