[Photo courtesy of BasiliskSam]Fast Company has an interesting blog post about the Long Tail, and how it exists beyond the Amazons of the internet. Part of the discussion seems to indicate that the hits of the world will still be hits. Some folks at the Wall Street Journal missed that point in a couple of recent columns. [I would post them, but that would violate certain terms, and I cannot link to it as they are a subscription site.] This post references them.
What this blog post gets right on the money is that the small niche companies that don’t have hits on the major scale [like Amazon] can survive as well.
I came across a record label online, Kning Disk, the other day that does that very thing. This material is able to make it out of the door and into enough people’s hands to sell out. Granted, the unusually small quantities may be an extreme example [their editions number from 465 discs down to single disc editions.] However, that may serve to reinforce the point.
If this little company from Goteborg, Sweden can garner the attention of enough people to routinely sell out their entire pressing of artists as obscure as German acoustic guitar player Steffen Basho-Jungens, they are in a much different place than they would have been in 1986.
Link to the Fast Company blog post.