The Long Tail,is a blog that refers to extremely large market on the internet for things that can not be found in stores. Specifically music and books that aren’t carried in music stores or book stores. This market is reportedly even bigger than the market of products available in stores. The long tail talks about how this is good for the industry but does completely change how it works. Because of the way selling internet music works, our market has turned to a much more singles based market. Many people have different views on how we go about selling the singles and the prices of them, but to me as things are, they seem fair. 1 song on a ten song album should be one tenth the price of the album. Many people, who dont really know the costs of working in the music industry think the current prices are bad, but in this long tail/ trail off in the market, one must remember that the little pays the price for their music. I am a perfect example.
The long tail specifically says that in order to intice more customers in a hard economy, they should lower their record prices. The author give an example of an artist who sells 300000 records. This is not the long tail. If you sell 300000 records you are recognized with a gold disc in the industry. The author states creative costs to be around 7.50 a disc for this CD. What they dont realized is that the artist only recieves around 7$ for every cd on itunes anyway. Forget the fact that that band wont break even on selling cds, the left over money after creative costs in make a cd that sells that much has already gone into promotion. The views expressed by the writer of this article in this paragraph clearly demonstrates that the author has no business in the record business. He is completely contradicting the idea of the long trail with this idea.
Lisa Dicarlucci also raises some points in an editorial that she wrote.
She talks about how people will just steal music illegally just as conveniently as buying it if itunes continues to anger people with raised prices. The people this affects most are the artists within the long tail. She asks why would apple want to punish the people who support them. It was Apple who was forced by the music industry to raise prices and she even quoted Steve Jobs talking about how it was the record industry pushing him to raise prices. The prices were raised however, due to the fact that apple would not change how much they wanted to take for each song sold. What I think is most interesting about her article is that she calls the price increases selfish. They arent selfish to the people who are still not making money off of records. Which is most people, including the 90% of artists signed to major record labels who dont break even off of their records. I think consumers are selfish. Has anyone ever not bought a candy bar because it was 99 cents instead of 70 cents?
I am a member of a band that has $20000 on a recent record. This is small change in the record industry. We also spend thousands and thousands of dollars on equiptment, rent, cds, merch, transportation, and many other things. The long sucks and we are definatly in it. Artists appreciate the long tail but after years of most would tell you that 1 stream a month on rhapsody from a cd you came out with years ago, is a good as none. The hit economy is decided by the big guys in suits, and it will continue to be that way, because they have the money, and they decide how to spend it. Records dont just get big becuase they say so though. They put far, far more money into records that flop.
I dislike people who steal so much music because they cant put up with the prices. CD sales are down, prices are down, recording costs are higher, and the ability to make money is harder. What educated person would say that a $10 cd that an artist sees so little of, is too much. People get rich off of music because people are willing to buy it. Not because its priced so high. My cd is same price a million other cds. And the cds that go platinum? They have had way more money into getting the disc to sell that much. I think its the consumers who are selfish and cheap.
