The Long Tail:Success in the Digital Age

Elaine Garciaegarcia@plymouthart.ac.uk

Tweet: ela1negarc1a

HIT!

HITS RULES!

Top No 1’s by decade….

Decade Song Artist Sales

50s Rock around the clock

Bill Haley and his comets

1.4M

60s She Loves You The Beatles 1.3M

70s Mull of Kintyre Wings 2M

80s Do they Know its Christmas time?

Band Aid 3.5M

90s Candle in the Wind 1997

Elton John 4.9M

00s Anything is Possible / Evergreen

Will Young 1.8M

10s Someone like you

Adele 1.2M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_singles_by_year_%28UK%29

50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 00s 10s0

1

2

3

4

5

6

No.1 Hits by Decade

Sales

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk

19841997

TV Choice was previously limited

1964

1936 1961

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_the_United_Kingdom

156 episodes Ran for 23 yrs

Ran for 9 yrs

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/

We just had no other choice!

Broadcasters could bring one show to millions

Now…..

The Internet can bring millions of broadcasts to one person

A zillion cultural shards….

Question

What percentage of these albums sold at least one track per quarter in the digital jukebox of

10,000 albums?

Answer

98%

Everything finds a demand

Sales that are outside offline stock:

Amazon – 25%Netflix – 21%

Rhapsody – 40%

Massively Parallel Cultures

How many do you know?1. The Star wars kid

2. The Dancing Baby

3. Paul the octopus

4. Fenton

5. Keyboard Cat

6. Rebecca Black’s – Friday

7. The Llama Song

8. Nyan Cat

9. The Golden Voice

10. I like turtles

Reforming into tribes that are less aroundgeography and more

around shared interests

For example….• A Blog can target a segment of the

reading public much narrower than a newspaper or TV channel

• Blogs are picking off the mainstream media’s consumers one by one by being niche.

So Success……

Is no longer driven by volume

For an online community to be a success you need

10-15 people.

So…..You may be more

successful than you thought!

To find out more…..