So Long to the Long Tail?
As we saw in class, long tail distributions are a good way to model the kinds of products purchased by consumers– the majority of the goods demanded by consumers is comprised of many niche products, rather than a few mainstream items. Indeed, many large businesses today were created (and prospered) by taking advantage of the long tail; Netflix is clear examples of a service that offer both mainstream and niche products to users. However, it seems that culture has begun to refocus on mainstream items, which has had an interesting effect on many of these services.
In recent years, many have noticed an interesting trend; with the proliferation of the internet and on-demand entertainment, we’ve reached a point where mainstream culture has become so prevalent that it’s almost impossible for less popular entertainment to ever gain any significant foothold. The LA Times agrees, going as far as saying that “the long tail of home video… has shortened to the point of vanishing.” Indeed, we’ve already begun to see this happen with movie rental stores; while in the past, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video used to reign supreme due to their focus on providing both popular and niche entertainment, these businesses have both failed entirely in recent years. While many blame services like Netflix for this, as they digitized a long tail distrivution of etertainment, other’s are not so sure. This is because the trend of the diminishing long tail has begun to permeate through even Netflix’s library; as the National Business Review puts it, Netflix’s “famed long tail of content has gotten a lot shorter.”
Does this mean the end of the long tail model of distribution? Not exactly; while entertainment may be appearing to move towards a different distribution, we are still finding that long tails continue to drive consumer actions when it comes to things like personal purchases. While Netflix continues to shrink its libraries in pursuit of original content, distributors like Amazon continue to prosper with their seemingly infinite inventories. At least for the time being, it seems that the long tail is here to stay.