The Long Fail

Back in October 2004, *Chris Anderson*, _Wired Magazine_ editor, published an article in the aforementioned magazine on this "new theory" that he had "stumbled" across. Short and not exactly complex, the theory, dubbed the _"The Long Tail"_, simply put forth the idea that when given limitless options people tend to select what appeals to them. A simplification to be sure, but Anderson's overwhelming reason it seemed at the time of writing the article was to give reason as to why the entertainment industry was losing money faster then Titanic on a cold Atlantic ocean. Much of what Anderson suggest seems to have evidence for and "makes sense", yet the reasons he gives seem too simple -- as if all of Hollywood's and music's problems simply center around choice. The economy of the blockbuster and hit is over he suggests, and we need to change with it. I agree with him. My grievance against the theory is that I attempted to read _The Long Tail_ over the weekend, the fleshed-out book format of the theory first proposed back in October of 2004. A 225+ page foray into explaining the new "tail" economy we live within now, Anderson plods along reiterating points over and over and over again using his favorite pet "Long Tail" companies like "EBay":http://www.ebay.com, "NetFlix":http://www.netflix.com, "iTunes":http://www.itunes.com, "Google":http://www.google.com, "MySpace":http://www.myspace.com, "Pure Volume":http://www.purevolume.com, "Amazon":http://www.amazon.com, and the dismal online music-streaming service *Rhapsody* (my experience with this company doesn't even warrant a link). After achieving the halfway mark of 130 pages this morning, Anderson finally gets around to explaining why online is the only way to do business from here on out. Stating that not even *NetFlix* and *Amazon* are true long tailers because they deal with 'physical products' vs. *Rhapsody* that deals with digital only. An aside: Anderson throughout this book had a boner for *Rhapsody*, dropping the service whenever humanly possible. The problems with *Rhapsody's* service vs. say "eMusic":http://www.emusic.com or even *iTunes* are three-fold: # Rhapsody's customer service sucks. I mean honestly, truly, how in the world could someone have such customer service and maintain a client base at all sucks. I've never, and I literally mean never, experienced such service that degrades and ridicules its customers like *Real Networks* does with Rhapsody customers. Way to go RN. Way to go. # While Rhapsody claims to offer "1.5 million albums", their selection in the indie, alternative arena is equilvant to iTunes. Only eMusic I've found to offer a deeper selection. # The software is a POS, and that's all I need to say. # And a bonus reason: You can only freakin use the service on your computer, isn't Mac compatible, and therefore doesn't work with iPod -- which is completely stupid. Suffice to say, save yourself the time and effort and read the "article first":http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html before taking the plunge to actually reading the book. If the article tickles you pink, well then knock yourself silly with the book. But if you're among that special group in our society that have the ability to "critically think", well you'll get most of the theory through the article.

Posted by Joshua Hynes

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at 8:20am. It has been filed under Business, Technology, Thoughts, Joshua.

Comments

Okay. So only one person has cared enough to leave their two cents. How depressing! Especially considering all the trouble I went through posting this in the first place. Well you can leave a comment if you want. It might cheer me up.

Emusic is definitely the way to go. Good stuff, my friend.
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Adam wrote on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at 1:08pm.