What he said

As usual, Seth Godin puts something better than I could:

A lot of people don't seem to understand a key implication of the long tail: Given the choice, it's better to make a hit.

If you have a choice of cutting a top 10 record or making a track of Jamaican polka music for iTunes, go for the hit.

If you have a choice between being on page 30 of the Google results for "Bolivian sushi" or the number one match for "buy life insurance", go for the latter. No brainer.

The problem, of course, is that you don't have a choice. You can give the hit a shot, but it's awfully crowded at that end of the curve.

The implications of the long tail have nothing to do with this false choice. What it explains in a powerful but subtle way is:

1. Collecting many many products among the tail permits you to amalgamate a market that may be just as big or bigger than the short head. But you need a lot of them. Squidoo is my proof--a profitable site with no real short head. So are eBay and YouTube and dozens of other places. Which is going to be worth more in ten years: the leaky boat of a network TV franchise or the relentlessly growing collection of long tail video at YouTube?
2. Within the long tail, there are micro long tails. The long tail permits entirely new micro-markets to emerge (exercise clothing, for example) and within that market there are hits and then the tail. It's sort of a fractal curve of new markets living within markets. (Simple example: Amazon enabled an entire eco-system of books on presentations and graphics to emerge).

Comments

[Ian Betteridge]

There's something about what Seth is saying, though, that makes no sense:

"You can give the hit a shot, but it's awfully crowded at that end of the curve."

It doesn't make any sense to talk of ends of the curve as "crowded", because while a market can be crowded, ends of the market in a success curve can't be - or at least not in the way that Seth is using the word.

Suppose you have £12 disposable income. You can choose to buy a hit CD, or you can choose to buy a different CD at the other end of the tail. What affects that purchasing decision is, of course, very complex.

But either way, you still have to make a single choice of purchase, and all buyers are perusing the same market. All of the CDs, no matter where they are in the tail, are competing for the same £12.

[Chris Anderson]

I think Seth's point was only that hits are great but they're hard (and unpredictable) to do. It's hard to get into the top ten of anything--it's not so much crowded as it is very fiercely fought up there and success can be fleeting.

[Adam Wexler]

Hey Chris,

I think Seth brings up some great points in this posting, but I wanted to respectfully disagree with one word choice. When deciding between a hit song and a "long tail" song, there are certain factors to consider.

In the context above, "better" is a very subjective word. "Selling out" is an all-too-common path to success these days. That is one of the biggest problems in the music industry right now. For too many bands, it's not about the music anymore.

It may be "better" to make a hit if you want the big bucks, but if you are in the music business for the right reasons, stay true yourselves and your own sound. As Bob Lefsetz likes to say, where has all the good music gone?

[Bryan Rosner]

Adam, you are missing the point entirely. We aren't talking about one's passion for good music. The long tail describes an economics model as it fluctuates and eventually lands somewhere new in the digital world. And unfortunately, since we live in a society governed by capitalism, that is what will ultimately shape the long tail economics. We are by definition referring to business and scarcity principles. What you describe is more of a hobby - making good music just for the heck of it. That kind of thinking belongs on a hobby blog.

Bryan

[Jason Armstrong]

It is a shame that the music produced in a capitalist society is entirely devoid of passion. Someone should pass a law to fix that.