mac129 the long tail
Post on 08-May-2015
466 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
1
THE LONG TAIL
mac129
2
Overview
Chris Anderson
Editor-in-chief of Wired The Long Tail: Why the Future
of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006)
Free: The Future of a Radical Price (2009)
3
4
5
6
Sales
Touching The Void Into Thin Air
7
What just happened?
8
What just happened?
9
What just happened?
‘[Amazon] created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. The result: rising demand for an obscure book.’ (Anderson, 2006: 16)
10
New economic model: infinite choice?
11
New economic model: infinite choice?
12
Hits vs. misses
20th century National
favourites Movies Songs Books Games
Hits
13
Hits vs. misses
‘Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.’ (Anderson, 2006: 16)
14
Hits vs. misses
20th century National favourites
Movies Songs Books Games
Physical world Locality
Hits
15
The tyranny of locality
Local multiplex
16
The tyranny of locality
Local multiplex
Average film needs 1500 people over 2 weeks
Average cost of ticket £5.00 1500 x 5 = rental cost £7,500
17
The tyranny of locality
Local multiplex
Released 4/12/09
18
The tyranny of locality
Local multiplex
19
Hits vs. misses
20th century National favourites
Movies Songs Books Games
Physical world Locality
Hits
20
Hits vs. misses
20th century National favourites
Movies Songs Books Games
Physical world Local
21st century Fragmented tastes
Movies Songs Books Games
Digital ephemera Dispersed
Hits Misses
21
Scarcity vs abundance
22
Power curve (aka Pareto principle) 1906 Vilfredo Pareto 80% of land in
Italy owned by 20% of population
23
Power curve (aka Pareto principle)
Income earners (%)
Population (%)
24
Power curve (aka Pareto principle) 1906 Vilfredo Pareto 80% of land in
Italy owned by 20% of population
80-20 rule Supply side
economics Finite physical
resources
25
Power curve (aka Pareto principle)
Human productivity (%)
Time available (%)
26
Power curve (aka Pareto principle)
27
Scacity vs abundance
Robbie Vann-Adibé: "What percentage of the top 10,000
titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?"
28
Scacity vs abundance
Robbie Vann-Adibé: "What percentage of the top 10,000
titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?”
98%
29
With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a ‘miss’ sold is a sale just like any other sale, - it has the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both are just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. Anderson, 2004
30
Markets without ends
31
Markets without ends
Average number of song plays (%)
Popularity of song (%)
2004: 75,000 songs2009: 5 million songs
32
Markets without ends
33
This is the Long Tail
‘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 (imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub’. Anderson, 2006: 22
34
This is the Long Tail: music
Digital = < risk?
35
Tower Records (US) Zavvi (UK)
36
This is the Long Tail: books ‘The average Borders carries 100,000
titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 100,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are’ Anderson, 2006: 23
37
New media, new rules
Rule 1: Make everything available Rule 2: Help me find it
38
Questions
Can you identify a number of online businesses that function on the basis of the ‘long tail’? Who are their physical world rivals?
Can you identify any physical world products or services that could benefit from adopting ‘long tail’ working practises?
What kind of barriers are there that prevent businesses adopting ‘long tail’ working practises? Fashion industry? Food production? Education?
top related