to have and to hoard

15 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 4 comments

As reported on the Wired Epicenter blog, a recent research study by BigChampagne Media Measurement and music rights organization PRS for Music may call in to question Chris Anderson’s theory of the Long Tail.

From the study: “The most swapped files were also the most downloaded on legal music sites, indicating that what’s popular is popular.”

Anderson responded to the study with a few salient points about P2P itself, “File-trading clients like BitTorrent are optimized for ‘hits,’ in that you’re more likely to find someone (or many people) sharing popular files locally, and thus have a better chance at a successful download.” His long tail theory applies to distribution platforms like Rhapsody which make a larger breadth of content, both hits and non-hits, instantly available. On a P2P network, the more people that have a file, the easier it is to find and the quicker it is to download – which means you’re likely to go elsewhere for that obscure number from 1972.

But this isn’t the first report to question Anderson’s theory. Last November, MBlox published findings that demonstrate a much more ‘head’ heavy distribution of sales (and then eMusic published its own report supporting Anderson). This recent report does point out that P2P networks contain about 22 million more songs than you can find on something like iTunes, and all songs receive a swap; so those files may represent a much longer, and therefore substantial tail.

While flipping through the study, this old quote from Ian Condry (2004) came to mind, “Unlike underwear or swimsuits, music falls into that category of things you are normally obligated to share with your dorm mates, family, and friends.”

I also remembered this quote from Bob Lefsetz, music industry ranter, “despite the long tail, most people are interested in hits. Even if that hit is a ten minute track on a rock station. Yes, people want songs that not only affect them emotionally, but that OTHER people are listening to. People want to be a member of the group.”

Music is inherently social, and how we collect music says a lot about our interaction with others. As someone with hundreds of gigs worth of music sitting on several hard drives, I think many of us feel compelled to hoard music for the very reason Lefsetz argues. We collect those mainstream hits simply to have them; to feel a part of culture, to share, and to shape our identity.

Three structural changes have also influenced how and why we collect music:
1) more people are sharing music and it’s gotten a lot easier to find music
2) which means music is mostly free through our peers
3) there’s almost no barrier to collecting tons of music (our hard-drives are enormous)

It’s interesting how we hoard digital files that can be queued up almost instantly at our whim. But having that collection and bragging about its size and diversity is important among our other music obsessed peers; and there’s almost no variable cost in downloading that next song these days.

Question: what else digital do you hoard that you could easily get within a few clicks? (for me it used to be music videos)

But conflicting with these structural changes is the erosion of the mainstream. Try to name the number one record this week. Try to name the one source of music recommendation for teens and young adults. Try to name more than a few that share the same top picks. It used to be a helluva lot easier collecting the hits. Sites like We Are Hunted attempt to glean what people are actually listening to and talking about – and although the usual suspects do appear, their total sales (and even downloads) aren’t anywhere near what mainstream acts used to garner. This is why the eMusic data looked more like Anderson’s Long Tail.

From the Wired article, “eMusic is the long tail,” reiterated Madeleine Milne, managing director of eMusic Europe. “Our customers buy music beyond the mainstream top 40 because we provide them with more context than any other major music retailer through Web 2.0 features, insightful editorial content, a passionate subscriber community and an easy-to-use and effective recommendation engine.” This also demonstrates that people still want a nudge in the right direction, to let them know how to enjoy the collective experience of sharing similar tastes, and to make sampling easier. Digital has taken over where mass media fell off; allowing small sites like eMusic to let likeminded fans congregate and share the collective experience over a subset of music in general. TV is the same; those people watching and twittering together are recreating a once communal activity – Heroes, and Lost are simply the vehicle for that social experience.

But I also wonder about how people are interacting with the hits versus the tail. It’s the same argument between impressions and expressions – beyond purchase, which songs are getting the most ear time? Which songs get ported from the computer to the device most? Just because labels haven’t figured out a way to make money off of repeated plays, doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Whew, this was a long one.