The two-minute tail
It’s taken me six weeks, shamefully enough, but I have finally read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. Here’s a very quick precis of the main idea for anyone just released from a Chinese prison:
The internet makes it possible for retailers to increase their available stock almost indefinitely. For example, Amazon stocks 3.7mn titles whereas the largest traditional book stores keep 100,000. The same proportions are true for iTunes, netflix, Rhapsody, cafe press and other online retailers.
This increased variety has an interesting effect. The products that aren’t big hits still sell. Amazon is believed to sell 98% of the books it stocks over any quarter. 98% of Rhapsody’s tunes are sold over the same period. When people have access to more variety, they develop a taste for it. And the accumulated value of all those little sales can add up. 25% of Amazon’s sales are books not available in any book shop. 40% of tracks played through Rhapsody are not available in offline record stores.