2 ms·

The author primarily talks money though. Yes the offer of music and video has increased substantially, but "long tail market"? Are there big enterprises making

by Levitz 3y ago

The author primarily talks money though. Yes the offer of music and video has increased substantially, but "long tail market"? Are there big enterprises making bank off niche consumers? I'm not so sure. As a consumer I don't care much either though, as long as the content is there.

majormajor 3y ago
The author talks about both money and variety voices/exposure for more people. Here’s what I think they miss: Netflix went from being part of the long tail to becoming an incumbent. Netflix then tries to find more big hits to maintain big incumbent winnings. And incumbents have been in many cases doubling down. But that’s exactly because the long tail is eating the “medium tail” that incumbents used to profit off of alive. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the long tail to bring in money. Though a competitive long tail will restrict just how high your margins can be. The long tail threatens Netflix now (if only to an extent: something like Squid Game becoming a hit in the US would blow the mind of someone in 2006 and seem like a perfect example of long tail content being able to not just be economically viable but potentially turn into a huge winner). But it threatens Spotify much less! They thrive off of it! The music world isn’t a bunch of services with exclusives trying to be winner take all, most content is across services. Similarly it threatens Amazon, AliExpress, Etsy, etc, much less than Netflix. The money in a “produce content for a small niche” was never going to be big for an individual producer, the money in that was going to be in being a successful aggregator, but in a competitive market you can only squeeze that so far. But if the long tail was dead in terms of people being able to get exposure and views and listens then the YouTube and Spotifys of the world and the big labels would be raking in cash like they used to. They’d have a product without much competition and they could charge more for it from all sides, and take more off the top from artists too. Instead they’re in a pickle because it’s hard to compete with free and the free long-tail is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of popular appeal (like things like youtube videos of people playing video games, which simply didn’t used to take ANY viewership away from TV shows).

by Levitz 3y ago

majormajor 3y ago

The author talks about both money and variety voices/exposure for more people. Here’s what I think they miss: Netflix went from being part of the long tail to becoming an incumbent. Netflix then tries to find more big hits to maintain big incumbent winnings. And incumbents have been in many cases doubling down. But that’s exactly because the long tail is eating the “medium tail” that incumbents used to profit off of alive. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the long tail to bring in money. Though a competitive long tail will restrict just how high your margins can be. The long tail threatens Netflix now (if only to an extent: something like Squid Game becoming a hit in the US would blow the mind of someone in 2006 and seem like a perfect example of long tail content being able to not just be economically viable but potentially turn into a huge winner). But it threatens Spotify much less! They thrive off of it! The music world isn’t a bunch of services with exclusives trying to be winner take all, most content is across services. Similarly it threatens Amazon, AliExpress, Etsy, etc, much less than Netflix. The money in a “produce content for a small niche” was never going to be big for an individual producer, the money in that was going to be in being a successful aggregator, but in a competitive market you can only squeeze that so far. But if the long tail was dead in terms of people being able to get exposure and views and listens then the YouTube and Spotifys of the world and the big labels would be raking in cash like they used to. They’d have a product without much competition and they could charge more for it from all sides, and take more off the top from artists too. Instead they’re in a pickle because it’s hard to compete with free and the free long-tail is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of popular appeal (like things like youtube videos of people playing video games, which simply didn’t used to take ANY viewership away from TV shows).