MUSIC|MEDIA|DESIGN

Wired editor in chief and author of the controversial “The Long Tail” and “Free”, Chris Anderson responds succinctly to the much-hyped Wharton critique of his Long Tail theory in  The Long Tail blog.

I linked the sources so you can get the details from the respective horses mouths.  But I think Anderson’s ideas get a bad rap, partly because people don’t like the message, and mostly because he draws many bad conclusion in the later (more sensational) work “Free”.  In the music production journal Mix, for example, he suggests that albums today are essentially commercials for tours.  This is absurd on a number of levels, but he supports it with a variety of anecdotes and symptoms that really don’t add up (or exist in reality).  It smelled like a book tour stunt, but may have been simple ignorance, combined with an enthusiastic amateur’s perspective.  As he describes his experiences within our business, you realize it’s distorted his opinions.  Unlike those efforts, this response points out two things we dare not miss:

• The way you crunch numbers (percentage vs. actual units) matters terribly in any conclusion.  You can easily miss the forest for the trees if you pick the wrong perspective (I’m with Anderson – Wharton blew this basic metric).
• There is indeed a change in sales patterns over a lifecycle of a product.
• The implications of all Long Tail phenomenon are greater in the value-chain as you approach the consumer/fan, and diminish as you get closer to content creators.  So they have more relevance to retailers (iTunes, Blockbuster), aggregators (Amazon, Netflix) and distributors than artist.
• The Long Tail affects artists and creators mostly over time – at the end of a long, productive career, an artist will see some benefit from their work, proportional with it’s cultural impact and quality.

The Long Tail can be 100% right, even if it’s theoretician applies it incorrectly.  Critiques that misapply it dangerously miss the point.

Today in hypebot I read about a Forrester Study with a plan to save music industry.  I tried hard not to yawn because Forrester’s ideas are as important as they are obvious: the status quo is unsustainable and change is required.  The suggested changes are, at this point in time, pretty conventional:

• Staggered release schedules for maximum exposure, and rewarding “true fans” without nicking existing income.
• Overhaul products, especially the album (underway at Apple and the majors)
• Free means free: Value-added content is more than a commercial for tours and albums.
• Leverage social media and form fan communities with incentives, and facilitate richer artist-fan relationships

The hypebot piece is light on detail, but we’ve heard all this before, especially the main pitch: The 4 Cs of Digital Content (Content, Convenience, Cost, Community).  ”Digital” is a buzzword we could avoid (vinyl is a viable product with a different mix of the same four dimensions), but whatever.  We get it:  The music industry will be saved by innovative products that deliver music conveniently and affordably to a communities of fans attached to artists.

Fortunately, that is precisely why music|media|design exists!  It’s nice to see the industry coming around to our neighborhood.  It’s about time.