The long tail...is it long enough?

So after this week's readings and lecture my mind was opened up to the whole notion of the long tail, and although the term was new to me, what it entails is not new. To me it pretty much just summarised the idea that people want more choice and if that choice is available it benefits not only themselves, but whoever is on the other end giving that choice. The common example used was that of Amazon, who through very intuitive and clever measures, has become the biggest and most notable book store in the world. Amazon is an online book store and as result do not have physical store fronts to serve their customers, it is all stored in warehouses and distributed to consumers when they purchase a certain product. This means they are not restricted by physical limitations and as such can stock a ridiculous amount of books, notably more than a physical store, allowing them to target niche markets. As Chris Anderson mentioned in his article The Long Tail 'the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.' So how does this apply to other stores and shops in a similar position? 

A great example to look at is JB Hi-Fi and particularly their music department. This is the department that most notably has the widest range of products on offer, basically due to the reason that stock can be imported from overseas and bought from suppliers who focus on getting overseas CD's. DVD's on the other hand cannot be imported from overseas and can only be bought from Australian suppliers, thus there is a much smaller amount of product available. An individual can get a DVD from overseas personally, but it is illegal for a company to do it under what is known as parallel importing. Anyway, so one of the great benefits of the CD department of JB Hi-Fi is that they have access to a large range of products both from overseas and local suppliers. In the past if there was that rare CD you wanted and couldn't get....you went to JB Hi-Fi ( or a number of smaller retailers of CD's such as Utopia or Red eye records). However, with the introduction of iTunes, MP3's and other forms of digital content JB Hi-Fi no longer has the longest tail, at least not in terms of their physical store. They have tried to counter attack this though through their online presence, which much like amazon.com provides information on other products consumers bought or related items which may also be of interest to a buyer. Is this enough however to survive, at least in terms of the music department? 


Given that the music industry is struggling to deal with issues of piracy and digital content in particular I would have to say the days of the CD store are somewhat numbered. It seems much easier these days to download music, whether legally or illegally, and with the amount of choice on offer it is almost a no-brainer. Kevin Kelly (2008) labelled eight generative values, of which I feel three apply directly to digital downloads, those of immediacy, accessibility and findability. Although some of the other values may not be present when downloading content, such as personalisation, it is still enough to make us value the product because of the speed and availability on offer. Would you rather pay money for a CD that might take a few weeks to come in (if not longer), or pay for the digital content which is downloaded almost instantly and was much easier to find? As much as I'd hate to say it, the latter is definitely the preferred option. As Clay Shirky (2002) said 'Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the equality.' In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.





Anderson, C 2004. The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10  URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html


Kelly, K 2008. Better Than Free. URL: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html


Shirky, C 2002. Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing. 

URL: http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html