On his blog, Chris Anderson shares an email he received from an independent filmmaker who, after an initial burst of enthusiasm about making a living in the long-tail economy, has come to the hard realization that the monetary rewards of being a long-tail producer are sparse, as the riches are funneled to the large companies able to aggregate content or advertising:
When first purchased, your book opened my eyes and got me quite excited about this “Long Tail” segment of the economy. While my eyes continue to be opened and I continue to be in learning mode, unfortunately the excitement over this Long Tail has faded away as “reality” has set in. My reality as a content creator and producer is that it is basically not possible for anyone in the “normal” realm to make a living in this Long Tail space …
Your Long Tail theory is a basic and profound truth that I happily embrace AS A CONSUMER. But as a producer and creator of Long Tail content it is basically spelling out my doom. Other than your book examples which are still basically about VERY LARGE entities and aggregators, I am finding very few self supporting examples of independent Long Tail producers. I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth…
Welcome to the world of digital sharecropping.
I recall the early days of cable TV, when an eccentric advertising pitchman named Ted had a chance to complete with superstars like Shelley Duvall and the Big 3 networks.
To make CNN work Ted Turner entered into all kinds of distribution and retransmission schemes, from smaller local TV stations that couldn’t afford their own newsgathering operation to airports and grocery stores. Ted understood that the new world order was going to be about who could do the best job of aggregating, normalizing, and redistributing a certain kind of data; in his case, national news video. No one else saw this as an opportunity; until the first Gulf War no one could believe that anyone would need more than an hours’ worth of news a day.
Those others that got excited about the explosion of eyeballs; well, those whose focus was not quite as sharp found themselves, like Shelley (who is really a wonderful, accessible person, IMHO) with a great business plan but no enterprise to go forward with. Those like Ted – and later Larry and Sergey and Mark – who understood the importance of being the apex aggregator; well, those are the guys who we will all remember.
Digital sharecropping, indeed.
wow, nick! 2 great posts in one day — you eat your Wheaties this morning? :)
Is anybody arguing that you can produce small numbers of “x” and compete with those who produce, or aggregate, large numbers of “x?” I thought the whole argument was that aggregating long tail items was what could compete with the head.
It doesn’t sound like this guy is either aggregating, or producing in the quantity that would be relevant to the long tail concept.
Tom Slee’s excellent critique of Anderson:
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2007/03/the_long_tail_l.html
I think this film maker is making the mistake to think that because Amazon can sell it, he can make a movie with similar principles as big-budget feature: assistants, reels, scenarist, etc. Less, probably a half, a quarter–but a at a comparable scale.
Distribution was transformed because its costs changed in scale; a new demand appeared and was revealed, but still at a negligible scale. Remember that long tail is a logarithmic thing: go down one step, and you are a tenth of what you where a step higher.
What I encourage him to do is either to turn into a YouTube producer, and do everything himself–still though, but an increasing number of video platforms will help make it. Maybe the direction he should be looking for is to offer an interactive product, or have different version, different cuts: short, long, action, romance aspects of his story more developed; not just “Standard” & “Director’s Cut”, but plenty. He might increase his audience this way, with hardly more shootings and more cuts, but less decisions on what to ad and what to drop.
His last mistake could also be that you can be an independent producer in the same country as Hollywood–OK, I’m trolling: the last ten good films I’ve seen were Sundance worthy (i.e. not Long Tail?)