The curse of the long tail in the music industry
I’m a music lover among other things, there’s just something so relaxing about it. I have some artiste I Stan (try urban dictionary 😊) and I’ve created fan pages for two of them. One of them recently released a new single and I was trying to do some promo, Stan style. The obvious first point of call was streaming apps like Deezer and Spotify. I got this intriguing response from Spotify (see picture below).
It got me thinking of a concept I learned whilst taking the e-business course during my MBA, the concept of the long tail. If you haven’t heard of it, no qualms I will explain. It was popularized by Chris Anderson a British-American writer and can be translated to how an industry is dominated by a few popular players who make the most money while the others scramble for crumbs and never really get their products to the clients. He assumed the scrambling others can be a new market and create a share that rivals that of the famous few.
It was prevalent when the online market was on the rise and the idea was the digital age was going to reverse this norm; for example, in the music industry, all artiste now had the opportunity to get their music across to listeners at no cost at all. Incremental cost is virtually zero in the digital age. You can literally share your music on so many platforms at little or no extra charge, considering you don’t have to invest in a new album case or shelf space for each sale. Well this reversal of the norm has not materialized because it seems like the consumers have stuck with their favorites and the long tail has gotten worse. According to Mark Mulligan of Midia Consulting, the top 1% make about 77% of the total industry revenue so the winner is still taking it all!
Back to my Spotify response, I’m here thinking the reason the long tail has gotten worse is because people just don’t want to risk trying new stuff but I’ve realized that’s not necessarily true for the following reasons:
as a music lover, I will about try just about any new record that crosses my path so far it’s in my genre which only excludes RAP and even at that, I still listen to the likes of Drake and Kendrick Lamar. So all records are in my purview regardless of language and all else, I listen to any and everything.
IT IS PRACTICALLY FREE! I mean I pay maybe N1,400 monthly for my iTunes subscription and I have access to all the songs in the world. Well maybe plus internet charges but it’s practically nothing.
Therefore, the only reasons I won’t listen to a new talent is if the record is absolute crap. So I’m thinking, if this artiste is amazing what then is the real problem?
During the era of physical albums, records companies made most of their money from a few artistes. In response to the digital changes, they had to find ways to keep this revenue streams the same. I will list a few things they may have used to keep their income streams as is, very smart of them:
Streaming apps: These app are creating playlists of maybe 50 songs which is the first thing in your face when you sign in. This list become the go to choice if you’re too lazy to do your research which we mostly are, everyone is busy. The choice of artiste and their work is based on so called use of “data research, taste and trends”, therefore only the big names will most likely make the list. I mean as a listener I can’t really listen to music I don’t know exist so I keep recycling the few names I’m aware of, popular or not. Occasionally a new name pops up on my playlist but I have only so many minutes in a day to devote to searching out new music.
Charts and countdowns: Everyone is in the race to be Top 10 on iTunes, Spotify, radio show countdowns etc. There are also all sorts of rating companies that give out silver, gold and platinum awards. The cut-off is at top 100 though, no one discusses you much after number 100, like at all. I know there’s Billboard 200 playlist but no one talks about it, Billboard 100 is the rave. To put this in perspective, how many musicians are there? Probably millions and on the average maybe 10 songs each (I don’t know, just a guess) and we only want to talk about 100 of them all the time?
Question is in such set up where you can’t be heard if you’re not Adele or Rihanna or Beyoncé (see what I did there, girl power!) how do you get your music across? What does an artiste have to do to escape the curse of the long tail? If I can answer that I will become rich charging consulting fees 😉. For now, I’m going back to being an accountant!
P.S: the artist I was trying to promote is Mo Jamil, he’s great. Check out James Arthur too, that’s my favorite artiste.