Saturday, April 12, 2014
Long Tail
I thought it was really interesting when Chris Anderson described himself as being in the “forecasting” business as he was explaining how Internet trends work. He explained that all important technology goes through four different phases; “critical price” then “critical mass” then “another technology” and then “free”. You can understand this as sort of a timeline for technology. He explains all of this by relating it to the life of a DVD, which follows these exact phases. Basically the DVD started out super expensive and in the end, after the technology advanced, it pretty much became free. I think it’s sort of the same with music downloading and purchasing music. I remember about 6 or 7 years ago when it seemed as if everyone I knew was buying songs for a dollar a pop and now it just seems as if everyone is either downloading music for free simply because they can get away with it. Everyone (not just computer savvy hackers like it seemed to be in the past) these days seem to know how to download free music. In the life of ITunes I would say that the “another technology” phase would be when Pandora and Spotify were created. This whole long tail thing makes me really wonder what sort of technology is in the early phase of “critical price” and what its future holds.
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The whole lowering price overtime kind of makes sense and stems back to the fact that at first, these things are new and take effort to make, but 5 or 6 years down the road and they've become so common that the price inevitably drops. Though I felt like I've noticed the opposite effect with music. It seemed like more people were just downloading it for free and then when iTunes showed up with 99 cents per song, more people sucked it up and spent a mere 99 cents. Though that's just a personal observation and it could be different in other locations.
ReplyDeleteThe ''forecasting'' bid made me laugh, it is so true, that people in the business of tech tools especially in modern days have to be able to predict what will be popular and in high demand, and what will not. I know as soon as i get a new computer there is a better one for the same price a couple of months later, it is frustrating but awesome that our world has the potential to be so fast at creating these tech tools.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think pirated movies and music does to a graph of the long tail? I bet it would look like one of those spiky-tailed dinosaur guys. Sorry, it's been a while since I've seen Jurassic Park. Not true, actually. I saw Jurassic Park like two weeks ago. Sorry for not knowing anything about dinos, I guess. In Anderson's article, though, he definitely described downloading free music in a sort of off-handed way. Did something happen between now and then that has made pirating media more civilian? Maybe we're all just more computer literate ten years later. It's funny, though, how he hit me right between the eyes when he talked about that point you reach when downloading free media where you decide it's worth it to cough up the money and get the goods legitimately. If only people got that frustrated every time they tried to pirate, the industry would be back on top. If Anderson forecasts technology for Wired, I'm sure there are pirates out there doing the same thing so they can stay one step ahead.
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