[Sigia-l] OT: Library Thing

[Listera]

Rennie, Christopher:

> As a librarian first and a technologist second,

'Nuff said. :-)

> I generally wrinkle my nose at the thought that profit-centered business
> models such as Google or Amazon have any intent to move beyond those items
> which provide 90% value to 90% of the people.

To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity,
look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by
RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve
that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top
tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting
thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the
amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be
sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the
world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few
potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even
enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of
Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is
true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody
adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just
a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html>

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.