The Long Tail Theory and the Climb the Tail Competition

The Long Tail Theory

The long tail theory can apply to many things but it is particularly relevant to the music industry and how it has been affected by the increased use of the web for sourcing and downloading music.

Because it is now possible for musicians at any level to present their music to a worldwide audience, the amount of music available to the consumer, whatever genre they are interested in, is almost infinite.

Graph illustrating the long tail theory

The Long Tail graph

The vertical axis represents the music market share (the numbers of sales increase from the bottom) and the horizontal axis represents the number of recording artists (the number increases to the right). The green portion represents the signed artists, the yellow area the unsigned artists.

As more artists are finding their way on to MySpace, the yellow portion - the long tail - is increasing in size at a phenomenal rate. This is making it more and more important for anyone wanting to move up the tail towards the green zone, where the real money is, to do something to set them apart from the crowd - they need to Climb the Tail.

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