Contrarian Thoughts About the Long Tail

Famous tech entrepreneurial billionaire Mark Cuban offered some interesting takes on the downside of the Long Tail on his blog, and I can attest to the truth of what he's saying when he writes, "No Content Creator wants to be on the Long Tail." Or I'd amend that to read no professional content creator wants to be on the long tail. Content creators want to break through the "content ceiling" – we want our work to break through the clutter and attain economic value, and continue to bring in money. For us, the Long Tail is inflation of the worst sort. The market is flooded with free writing. It's mostly crap writing, but most people don't know the difference. Everybody can write up to a certain level of competence. In other words, if someone is not a piano player, they will sit at the piano and hit the wrong notes and nobody will listen. If somebody is not a "writer" in the sense that those of us who are writers mean it, they can still sit down and communicate.

Cuban writes, "If the goal is commercial, whether to make money directly or indirectly from the content, then the battle to fight through the Content Ceiling begins." And "Very few commercial content creators aspire to get 10k aggregate views from all the videohosting sites. Very few bands are happy with having 10k free downloads , or even 10k friends on Myspace as their endgame. Very few commercial content creators aspire to see their creations end up on Community Access TV. All content creators recognize each of these as a way to create incremental demand for their content, in hopes of breaking through the Content Ceiling, but none of these will reward the content creator with direct revenue. For content creators trying to make a living from their work, they all just represent the Long Tail Ghetto."

This is all about the downside of Long Tail economics. Those that build the thoroughfare, the aggregators make the big bucks. Those that fill in the content, mostly, do it happily… for free. The net is a playground for interaction. A few comfortable technophiles like Chris Anderson and Cory Doctorow (I love Cory and think he's a genius but I do think he's a bit glib about this) are excessively glib about how all this effects artists – musicians, writers, ad infinitum. The narrative is that you can use your music, writing, etc. to get people's attention and then offer them something else. WHAT? The lecture market dried up fifteen years ago, the mid-level book authors are being axed by a declining book industry, magazines are dying and most of the ones that exist are deadly to the imagination.

Speaking to those who are seriously trying to get ahead with content-based projects, Cuban writes, "For all the talk of the internet changing distribution, the reality is that in order to break through the Content Ceiling and to climb the Vert Ramp, 99.9 pct of content creators are going to do need OPM (Other Peoples Money). The internet alone is not going to get the job done. You can put your content everywhere and anywhere the net allows you to be hosted, but for most people the amount of revenues for that content you had before you started the hosting process will be the exact same as what you have after the hosting process."

Of course, there's no fighting the distribution of tools for communication to the great masses, and I'm in favorite it. PJ is part of this process. But it's worth remembering the downside. There is also a possible market here, servicing quality "content creators" and helping them to find new markets. It's something to think about.

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