Cutting off the long tail

All of us working in the digital space like the Long Tail theory - it's simple, elegant, makes intuitive sense, and offers a lot of hope that small can be viable, even successful.

But is it actually true?

British economists have recently completed a study of 'tens of millions' of digital music transactions. And they found not the Pareto Power Law of the Long Tail, but the Log Normal distribution of a classic sales curve.

You can check it out in more detail here (although I should warn you that it's not the best written thing I've ever come across). And there's a preceding article arguing why the economics (particularly in music) don't stack up either.

But some interesting stats for you to be getting on with…

• 80% of the digital inventory had no sales at all - starkly put, there was no tail, long or otherwise.
• 80% of sales were accounted for by just 52,000 songs. The number of songs, in fact, that could be found on around 4,000 CDs…roughly the inventory held by a typical high street music store.

I'm sure there's a strong counter argument to be made. But it does make you wonder.

So brave new world? Maybe.

Alternatively, in the wise words of the Who: meet the new boss…same as the old boss.