Wired: The Long Tail

By Xeni Jardin at 11:17 am Tuesday, Oct 5

Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has a doozy of a piece in the current issue, now online. "Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts," it begins, "The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream." Mr. Anderson tells BoingBoing:

Short form: The rise of online distribution and its unlimited shelf space is leading to a dramatic shift in the entertainment business from hit-driven economics to niche-driven economics. Content that was once relegated to the fringe, beneath the threshold of commercial viability, is now increasingly able to find a market in distributed audiences. The interesting work is now in finding way to push demand down the Long Tail.

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