While I enjoy Wired magazine for news of the newest acronym or cell phone, I read it every month because of the exceptional essays it occasionally publishes. Three of my favourites are:
All three pieces have influenced my thinking, and “The Millenium Clock” would go on my desert island list of essays.
Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail doesn’t quite meet that standard, but it’s an excellent piece of writing. It discusses how the future of entertainment revenue is in a million niche markets, not in big, short-lived hits. The facts are pretty astounding:
What’s really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see “Anatomy of the Long Tail”). In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: “The biggest money is in the smallest sales.”
If it’s true, this thinking represents a pretty profound shift in the entertainment marketplace. It’s reflected, I think, in the fact that there is no longer a top-40 radio station in Vancouver. The listenership has become so fractured that there’s no market for one.
UPDATE: I note that the author himself has submitted the article to Slashdot. Here comes the nerd bitching.
DarrenBarefoot.com 