Comments on: Why doesn’t iTunes have a long tail?

By: Andre Sammartino

Andre Sammartino — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:32:56 +0000

Just an update: the Clouds and Rat Cat are now available on iTunes. The works of the Falling Joys and The Hummingbirds (plus others of note such as The Welcome Mat) remain elusive…

By: the long tail « interlucation

the long tail « interlucation — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:59:40 +0000

[...] Why doesn’t iTunes have a long tail? (internationalbs.wordpress.com) [...]

By: Gibbon

Gibbon — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:59:43 +0000

The article assumes that older releases are unavailable due to laziness. This is not always the case.

Recordings can be deleted for any number of reasons including: infighting, copyright issues, legal issues, embarrassment, ego, lack of interest, changing trends.. you name it.

In some cases the rights, once sold to a label, can exchange hands so many times, that ownership can’t even be determined.

In particular, if any of the affected parties go out of business, the songs can end up in limbo for eternity.

By: ethanhuynh

ethanhuynh — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:58:32 +0000

The author was confused by the term “long tail”. IMO this term is best used to visualize how a model works (Amazon’s long tail of books, Google’s long tail of niche keywords and search results…), but when applying this concept strictly to a specific model to see if it’s a long tail business it can yield biased conclusions. He cannot find one specific album on the store doesn’t mean iTunes is a no “long tail” store. Or like when I cannot find a book on amazon it doesn’t mean Amazon is a no long tail business.

So rather trying to conclude if iTunes is a long tail business by looking for one specific item and see if it’s available, a better and more precise way to do it is to look at the stats (quantity of “niche” songs sold compared to the more popular ones, revenue earned from those niche songs …) to see if iTunes selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities.

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By: Tom Osegowitsch

Tom Osegowitsch — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Here’s a link to some recent research into the long tail:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2338