Chris Anderson: The Long Tail of the Music Industry
The Long Now Foundation - The Long Now Foundation
The Long Time TailYou know something is up when an audience member is taking cell phone photos of the presenter's slides for instant transmittal to a business partner.Chris Anderson does have killer slides, full of exuberant detail, defining the exact shape of the still emerging opportunity space for finding and selling formerly infindable and unsellable items of every imaginable description. The 25 million music tracks in the world. All the TV ever broadcast. Every single amateur video. All that is old, arcane, micro-niche, against-the-grain, undefinable, or remote is suddenly as accessible as the top of the pops."The power law is the shape of our age," Anderson asserted, showing the classic ski-jump curve of popularity - a few things sell in vast quantity, while a great many things sell in small quantity. It's the natural product of variety, inequality, and network effect sifting, which amplifies the inequality - Stewart Brand, The Long Now Foundation