Chris Anderson: The Long Tail case study

1. What is Chris Anderson’s theory of ‘the long tail’? 

Chris Anderson has summed up that the future of retail will focus on the idea of selling less of more. This will be based on putting everything online. Anderson puts forth the idea that the internet enables the large number of non-hits to increase in order to economically outweigh the hits. He states that the economy is shifting from focusing on a small number of hits and moving towards a significant number of niches in the tail. This is mainly because physically there is not enough shelf space in the traditional record shops and only the most popular items can be offered. However, online storage is not a problem. 

2. What does the theory of ‘the long tail’ mean for the music industry and to other areas of the media such as online television?

The theory of "the long tail" raises issues some issues within many areas of the media. The first issue which arises is that the more things made available online, the more people will explore the non-hits. This means that the sales of the hits may end up suffering. If a million singles are available online, the 100 most popular singles will still be a success, however a large proportion of the people will explore rather than consuming the hits, this creates a loss within the industry in general. 

However, this may not necessarily be considered a bad thing as the more things available online, the more that people will consume overall. For example, the site, Amazon sells more books than any other bookstore due to the idea that the site sells a larger amount of books than any other. 

An advantage of the Long Tail provides a greater future for the mass market retailers moving online by reducing the main issue of the shelf space, furthermore it provides future paths for a large number of niche products that may have not been accessible in the traditional means. 

3. What is Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ theory of Wikinomics?
The term Wikinomics refer to describing the effect of collaboration and user-participation within the  

market place and the corporate world. 

4. What are the five big ideas of Wikinomics and how might these ideas be applied to the music industry?

The main concepts behind Wikinomics are:

• Peering, which refers to the idea that products can be shared amongst peers. For example, sites such as Spotify and Facebook encourage sharing music with peers and are designed to be shared with several people creating a continuous chain of peer recommendation.
• Free creativity is a positive outcome of the free market. It is difficult to control the creativity of the web. However, a service called Creative Commons provides protection at the same time allowing people to remix material within limits.
• Due to peering, we media journalism and creativity,the media has become democratised.
• The idea of thinking globally, embracing the globalization and ignoring all possible boundaries.