Tail Tales
Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory is facing it’s first major challenge: According to a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, who is also the guy behind the economic modelling for Radiohead’s In Rainbows album, more than 10 million of the 13 million music tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year. (On the other hand, for every paid for song there where 20 pirated.) Read the whole Times Online article here.
UPDATE: eMusic data contradicts UK study.
In this interview from 1999 Kodwo Eshun is talking about ‘ocean of sound’, the constant anxiety created by musical oversupply and people’s resulting need for a grand narrative to fixate on. And today? Ten Million songs unsold! Looks like grand narrative is pretty much still in effect. But then: 13 million songs. This ain’t no mere post-scarcity no more, this is a massive expanding ocean of noise. Waiting to be explored. Waiting for everyone to drown in?
„ Noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”
John Cage says. Thanks John. He taught me to really hear again. I don’t need to be surfing the hype train in angst to miss out on the next big shee-at no more. I can now rock out to the misty slurring sounds of my washing machine. Thanks indeed.
Kodwo Eshun will be discussing the long tail with Kode9 at Audio Poverty, Feb. 6. Should be interesting, me thinks.
mixed signals: vinyl sales go up, cd sales down, downloads growth slows down and the music market as a whole is shrinking while americans buy more music than ever, that is until the crash. lucky those who can hide under the tail.
Guess I tend to listen to the Short Head as far as Music is concerned (or lets say the tail thats no tail anymore). Maybe Anderson has underestimated the cost involved for someone whos moving his demand down the tail. (takes more time to find stuff and quiet often hit-titles are cheaper including former avantgard that are now mainstream)
By the way, to the blogger in charge:
I like the way you wag the tail and shake heads!
thanks for kind words, max, and welcome to the blog!
to expand on your idea on those tail endz: seemingly the people who spend great amounts of time to find the stuff they want to listen to under the tail tend to lack the will/financial capacity to spend money on top of all their time.
yrs, enz aka mcb aka ‘the blogger in charge’
i found this via rupture’s post.
anyway, i’m curious as to your thoughts on this idea to help artists in a post-scarcity environment.
i think it just might work, and since you are interacting much more actively with these topics, i thought you should know about it.
view also: w&w comment on mudd up
January 17, 2009
re: that study supposedly debunking the “long tail” theory, emusic says it’s wrong –
“Approximately 75 percent of eMusic tracks sold at least once during 2008 based on a recent analysis of worldwide sales data,” says an announcement detailing eMusic’s 2008 sales. “This finding supports the existence of retail’s ‘long tail’ and contradicts a November 2008 study released by British licensing body MCPS-PRS. That study claimed that of the 13 million songs on the internet, ten million did not sell a single copy.”