A long and somewhat rambling post about the long tail as it pertains to independent bands.

The Internet has revolutionized retail. It’s also changed the way people work and play. To be sure, the Internet has its drawbacks, but that’s the risk of revolution. The good news is that we’ve only begun to reap the benefits of a world untethered from traditional selling, marketing, buying, and consuming.

The Long Tail

In a book I highly recommend called The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, wrote about a statistical model called the long tail. The head consists of best-selling products, also called “hits,” and the long tail is “non-hits,” products that sell in smaller quantities. Products in the head may sell millions per year; those in the long tail may sell only one or two a year.

According to Anderson, the culture and the economy are “increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.”

For example, a large portion of online retailer Amazon.com’s book sales consists of books not found in traditional book stores. People still buy the hits, but demand for non-hits has grown, thanks to the Internet.

(Read the article that started it all and Anderson’s blog.)

While blockbusters still exist, the era of the hit was driven by scarcity. The Internet has opened up a seemingly infinite world of niche goods and services that may or may not be available in brick-and-mortar stores. Because storing products on shelves and in storage rooms costs money, brick-and-mortar retailers tend to stock only those products that sell well. This leaves little room for niche market products. But technology has made producing, storing, and distributing products cheaper. Online retailers can store more inventory and offer consumers a wider variety of products. The long tail, says Anderson, is where future growth resides.

Anderson writes, “In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

Online retailers can stock just about anything. For example, even if a song generates only one download a year, an online retailer doesn’t have to worry about making room for a better-selling song.

Anderson predicts that the aggregate size of niche markets – songs that don’t get radio airplay, movies that can’t be found in brick-and-mortar stores, osbcure books, etc. – one day “may…rival that of the existing large marketing goods.”

There are three forces driving the growth of the long tail. The Internet has: 1) “democratized” the tools of production; 2) “democratized” the distribution of goods and services; and 3) helped consumers find niche market goods and services (in the form of search engines, recommendations, rating systems, etc.).

Anderson uses online music service Rhapsody as an example of how the Internet expands the niche market. On the web site’s front page, you’ll see mainstream artists like Jennifer Lopez. Click on her name, and her music page comes up. In a sidebar you’ll see a list of “similar artists” and “influences.” Keep drilling down, and you’ll end up with a list of obscure artists whose CDs you wouldn’t find in a brick-and-mortar record store.

Online music services like Rhapsody and DVD rental and download services like Netflix offer the standard blockbusters, but they’ve opened up a world of non-mainstream and obscure music, movies, and TV shows. No matter how eclectic or weird your taste, you’re bound to find something you like in the long tail.

Free Music, Independent Bands

Bands become independent for a variety of reasons. Record labels may drop them because of poor sales, or they can’t get signed by a record label in the first place, or they rebel against a record label’s fixation on marketing and CD sales at the expense of the bands’ artistic integrity.

While there is risk in going independent and disentangling oneself from a capital-rich, big budget record label, rapidly changing technology has made the jump less scary. Production and distribution of music are relatively cheap. Independent bands own the copyright to their music, can sell it directly to fans, and keep all the profits. The middle man is eliminated. But that also means the band must do its own marketing and publicity and/or hire a publicist. This is a plus for fans, as independent bands must be fan-focused to retain the fan base and attract new listeners.

Radiohead – Even if you only scan news headlines, I’m sure you’ve seen the name “Radiohead” recently. People are buzzing about the English rock band, who announced last week that it will allow fans to download the digital version of its latest album at whatever price (including nothing) they want to pay. Two more independent English bands followed suit. Jamiroquai (pictured below) and Oasis are offering free music downloads. (Source)

In response to Radiohead’s bold move, EMI record exec Guy Hands told employees that the music industry has to change or suffer the consequences. The industry needs to embrace “digitalisation and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, the industry has stuck its head in the sand.” (Source)

Musicians still have to eat, so Radiohead hopes the publicity surrounding its “free” downloads will result in higher merchandise and concert ticket sales. Additionally, Radiohead is offering an $80 boxed set, which includes the hard copy version of the digital download, another CD with new songs, two vinyl records, digital photos, artwork, and lyric booklets. If you order the boxed set, however, you get the digital downloads free anyway.

What Radiohead, Jamiroquai, and Oasis are doing isn’t new. Offering fans free or set-your-own-price music is not a novel concept.

Hanson – Like Radiohead, the band Hanson is offering free (and immediate) digital downloads of its new album, “The Walk.” Unlike Radiohead fans, Hanson fans must buy the CD to get the downloads, and they must buy it from the web site. The CD contains three extra tracks not available as digital downloads. Fans can also buy the CD/acoustic DVD combo. The DVD includes live acoustic performances of seven songs.

Diehard Radiohead and Hanson fans will buy the bands’ CDs and other merchandise and attend concerts anyway, so there doesn’t seem to be much risk in offering “free” and/or immediate digital downloads.

In Radiohead’s case, fans can either wait for the boxed set’s release to get the hard copies and the downloads, or pay nothing, a nominal fee, or “full price” – whatever they choose – to get the downloads now.

If you regularly read this blog, you know I’ve been blogging about Hanson, three song-writing brothers, quite a bit. The group hit it big in 1997 with a bubble-gum pop song called “MMMBop.” I’d forgotten all about them and had no idea they were still together until I rediscovered them this summer. Being an independent type myself, I was drawn by their risk-taking and willingness to take on so much responsibility. (And they’re kind of easy on the eyes.)

Hanson was under contract with Mercury Records when the label merged with Island/Def Jam Records. Suddenly, the band found itself dealing with executives and producers who didn’t know the group and tried in vain to mold the band according to its ill-informed vision. The prolific Hansons wrote over 80 songs, all of which Island/Def Jam rejected as unmarketable. The label wanted an MMMBop-sized hit, and Hanson, trying to get away from the teenybopper image, rebelled. After three years, the band managed to get out of its contract. The brothers’ frustrating ordeal is immortalized in a documentary called “Strong Enough to Break,” available as a free download on iTunes.

Hanson has since released two albums under its own label, 3CG Records (which stands for three-car garage, where the brothers first practiced as kids).

Prince – Once the love of my formerly debauched life, Prince has aged gracefully, physically and musically, and changed with the times. Earlier this year, the prolific independent artist gave away copies of his latest album CD in a UK newspaper and subsequently (and consequently?) sold out 21 shows in London.

One of those Internet drawbacks I mentioned earlier is copyright violation. While technology has made music easier to produce, distribute, and find, it’s also made it easier for people to share songs and upload copyrighted videos without compensation to the artist or label.

Prince is suing YouTube and eBay over unauthorized use of his work. I don’t see how he or his lawyers can possibly stop hundreds of people from uploading his videos or from selling merchandise on sites like eBay. This thing is too big now. Yes, it’s unfair to the artist, but artists need to find a way to capitalize on this instead of suing to stop it. It’s a waste of good money.

The Long Tail of Independence

Under the long tail model, demand for niche products, which include albums by lesser known and independent bands, extends beyond the hit market. There is no “shelf life,” so albums continue to sell and are easily accessible in the long tail, thanks to the Internet. Indie bands producing and distributing their own music can use the power of the long tail to reach audiences.

I asked drummer Zac Hanson how the Internet has affected the band’s album sales. He acknowledged that the Internet has changed the way people find and buy music and, more importantly, not buy music. Technology, as wonderful as it is, has made it possible for people to illegally copy CDs and illegally upload and download digital music files.

Regardless, I believe technology helps indie artists more than it hinders them. The long tail and its driving forces (cheap production and distribution and better filters) favor indie musicians. They have much more freedom and flexibility than those under contract and beholden to a record label, which allows them to change with the times and to experiment with releasing music in different formats.

Record companies, which have been very slow to change, are focused on moving CDs and other merchandise. As this record label guy said, the music industry must be willing to experiment with the digital format.

An independent musician selling his own music in digital format doesn’t have to worry about storing or restocking inventory. There’s no record label hovering around to take a cut and no legal department waiting to nix his marketing and licensing suggestions. It’s true freedom, and that freedom does carry risk.

The bottom line is that corporate record labels are in business to make money, and that’s not a bad thing per se. But when the obsession to produce a hit comes at the expense of an artist’s integrity, the artist has a decision to make: compromise or leave. The risk-taking artist will embrace independence, technology, and the power of the long tail.

And taking risks is what makes life worth living (at least for me.)

Update (10/11): Forgot to mention this. American rock band Nine Inch Nails just left its record label. Said the lead singer: “I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.”

Freedom. And responsibility.

Related:

• Wired – The Rise and Fall of the Hit
• Wired – The Infinite Album
• Hanson Takes “The Walk” To Independence
• Hanson Concert Review/Interview

“You know, it is strange how so called tolerant homosexuals and their supporters want government to get out of their bedrooms, yet they want that same government to force others to not only refrain from verbally disagreeing with them but also to force them to accept their lifestyle, even by force. If you want government out of your bedrooms, then stop advertising what you do in your bedrooms in the street, on t.v. and in the classroom.”

Update (12:44): To focus the discussion a bit more, I’ll pose another question. A business seeking a license can’t refuse to serve people based on race (esp. if it does business with the government), but can that same business refuse to serve people whose lifestyles/behavior is offensive to them as Christians or violates their religious convictions?

If your answer is no, do you have a similar opinion about Muslim cab drivers who refuse to drive customers with alcohol? If pharmacists can refuse to dispense abortion pills because of religious convictions, why can’t landscaping Christians refuse to landscape on the same grounds? (No pun intended!)

More questions: An upscale restaurant may discriminate against people who aren’t wearing ties. Any restaurant may refuse to serve an unruly person. But refusing to serve a black person invites lawsuits. In that regard, can a landscaping business refuse to work for homosexuals but not blacks? Does it depend on the nature of the business?
—————————————————————————————————

Should a business have the right to refuse to work for certain people for any reason?

I say yes.

A Christian couple with a landscaping business in Houston refused to work for two cohabitating homosexuals, and, as expected, were vilified for it.

From the article:

“It was just our intent to uphold our rights as small business owners to choose our clientele,” she said. “All the hate, the threats of sodomizing my children, the threats of me being murdered, came out because of a very businesslike straightforward e-mail I sent. The crowd of tolerance and diversity is not so tolerant.”

In my experience, people who preach tolerance are the least tolerant people I’ve ever met.

As expected, “gay activists” brought up race, equating skin color with perversion. “Imagine if it had been a black or Hispanic couple that they wouldn’t provide services to. It’s really bad,” whined one such activist. Very irritating.

On a personal note, I worked with a homosexual client. At the time I didn’t know he was a homosexual. Had I known, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. I have no problem advising a homosexual on how to improve his web site, but I wholeheartedly support these business owners’ decision not to work with them.

In fact, I believe business owners have the right to work for whomever they want and to refuse to work for anyone for any reason, including race. That’s the beauty of private enterprise.

Your opinion?

Porter’s research, along with other recent studies, show that immigrants bring something you can’t get from a government program: work ethic and job-creation skills, and ambition coupled with the resolve to make the most of the investment others have made in them.

“They engage in businesses that most of us don’t want to engage in, like Laundromats and dry cleaners. They have a dogged determination to succeed,” said Keenan Grenell, associate provost for diversity at Marquette University.

Instead of complaining about how immigrants come here and take jobs or how they set up shops in black neighborhoods that they often don’t understand, let’s applaud them for their ambition and their willingness to do the things to help the economy that we wouldn’t do.

I’ve often marveled at the fact that immigrants are willing to venture into some of the most dangerous locales where few others would go and create successful businesses. I know few people, myself included, who are willing to take such risks or who have the motivation to work the horrendous hours – 12 to 16 hours a day – that many immigrants often put in to nourish and build their businesses.

For many decades, black folks here and across the nation have watched immigrants quietly come into our neighborhoods and dominate niches, such as dry-cleaning shops and gas stations. (Source)

Also read Johnson-Elie’s recent feature article, Immigrants create a new land of opportunity. I assume many of you know immigrants who came to America with very little but managed to achieve the American dream. And I’m sure many of you are as baffled as I am that people born and raised in this great country really believe their skin color prevents them from doing the same.

Despite my posturing and sometimes deliberately puffed-up pontificating, I’m nothing special.

I’ve worked hard to build up this blog and my consulting business. I’m always looking out for ways to market myself and learn new things. For example, I’m as frightened of public speaking as anyone else, but I force myself to do it and to get better at it because it provides both a challenge and exposure. Challenges build character and marketable skills whether or not you overcome the challenges. It is the struggle that’s important and what stimulates me.

Embracing the struggle and overcoming challenges are part of my personality. It’s why I’m so critical of what I consider wasted opportunity and people who don’t want to struggle. But I often fail to consider that some people’s struggles are overwhelmingly debilitating.

Not everyone can make the same decisions and take the same path I took. Not everyone grows up in a decent home or with a father or with a father who is an entrepreneur. Some grow up mired in what’s called a “cycle of poverty,” an attitude passed down from generation to generation. Broadly defined (there are exceptions), this cycle perpetuates underemployment, illegitimacy, substance abuse, and criminality. Typically, these are characteristics of the “underclass,” a sub-group that functionally lives outside the mainstream.

I know people who are members of the underclass. They are in my own family. Some were friends growing up. I pass them on the streets of Washington, D.C., (as I’ve done in Philadelphia), and sit beside them on the subway. I see their lifestyles glorified on TV and in movies. I’ve watched liberals pander to them, promising more government perks and blame-shifting. I’ve worked on gang trials and had to look at their remorseless faces all day, five days a week and listened to testimony of their murderous deeds and collated bloody crime scene and autopsy photos of people murdered because they were witnesses.

(Criminals come from all social classes, so I’m not implying that only the underclass produces criminals or that all members are criminals.)

I have yet to meet a white liberal who can attest to the same or anything close to it. I had an interesting conversation at CPAC with a white conservative on this topic. She’s had some experience with the underclass, and her naivety about what works is gone. More important, though, is what she said about liberals who push social programs that keep them locked in the cycle.

“Is this all liberals want for them? Handouts? Don’t they believe people can do better and should expect more than what liberals think they should have? I’ve seen it up close, and I know those social programs do not work.” (paraphrased)

I didn’t have an answer for her.

This may sound mean-spirited (it’s not), but I believe some people want nothing more than to exist and engage in every vice imaginable. They have no regard for others, not even the children they sired. To me, that ought to be criminal. They don’t care what you or I think of them, they have so sense of pride or conscience, and they’re only out for themselves. (That’s fine when you’re earning your own way, but when you’re living on my tax dollars…) When convenient and/or profitable, they’ll blame others for their lot: racist Republicans, Democrats who aren’t doing enough for “black people,” their probation officers (!), their own family…

This may sound unrealistic (it’s not), but I believe people who want to improve their lives find a way to do it, whether they sign up for classes or job training or seek out others who’re successful. Even if they live in the most blighted of neighborhoods with no decent role models whatsoever, they can better their lives.

And this is where I can close the circle. I need to make an effort to seek out such people. Individuals have different motivations, varied levels of talent, skill, and drive, and different levels of exposure to opportunity. I certainly didn’t come this far on my own. I have a supportive family, encouraging friends, influential acquaintances, a drive to be ambitious and different, and most of all, a relationship with the living God.

To righteously criticize bums and social parasites of all colors isn’t unbiblical; to offer no hope definitely is. I try to do that on this blog, but the people who need to hear and read the words the most probably don’t read blogs.

Nothing touches me more than to see people willing to struggle. The whole world may be against them, but they are bound and determined to make something of themselves when no one has faith in them. The cycle of poverty and failure can be broken. I must be willing to help those who want to break it but don’t know how any way I can.

One thing is certain: hope doesn’t cost money, and I’ve got plenty of it to share.

Update:

• Listen to my interview with Lores Rizkalla last week and the one with Captain Ed on Saturday live from CPAC.
• Part III of the Intelligence series will be posted this week. I may add a fourth post. Lots of info. See The Last Taboo (Part I) and Some Research (Part II).
• Lost in the shuffle: CPAC wrap up.
• Blogging Brit Clive Davis reviews John McWhorter’s new book, Winning the Race: Beyond the Crises in Black America. That’s what I’m talking about, naysayers…who inexplicably read my blog although they hate it. Human nature is weird!

“You don’t like cake?” I exclaim. “What kind of human being doesn’t like cake? Cake is so good.”

After scenes like that, I’m usually worked up enough to stop by CakeLove or Love Cafe, two stores owned and operated by Warren Brown. I secretly hope he’ll be there on days I go in to scan a myriad of choices. Will it be a $7 slice of chocolate or cheese cake, or a $3 vanilla cupcake with lemon frosting? Man, just thinking about it…but it’s only 8:30 in morning. The store’s probably not open yet anyway.

Brown has been in the store during most of my visits, but he’s usually behind the counter with a plastic cap on his head mixing dough. One time I saw him in Love Cafe sitting on one of the couches.

“Congratulations on opening a second store (Love Cafe, across the street from CakeLove). Your business is a huge success. It’s wonderful to see,” I said.

“Thanks,” Brown said, “but I certainly didn’t do it alone.”

I’d read stories about him before. What started out as a dream for a government lawyer who wrote cake recipes while riding the Metro and baked in his free time has become dramatically real. Brown’s opening a second CakeLove, his third store, in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, and he’s signed on to do a show called “Sugar Rush” for the Food Network. From the Washington Post (reg. req.):

“Sugar Rush,” which will be shown on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m., will debut in mid-October. “Recipe for Success,” an ongoing program, airs on Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. Brown’s episode is being filmed.

Each episode of “Sugar Rush” follows Brown as he visits restaurants, pastry shops and bakeries around the country to talk with pastry chefs and chocolatiers, then returns to his kitchen to cook a recipe he’s learned from them.

Yes, yes, all that is wonderful, but there’s something missing. Warren Brown needs a blog. He’d get crazy traffic. He should hire another entrepreneur who knows blogs to help him set it up, and I know just the woman person.

If you’re ever in D.C., stop by Love Cafe or CakeLove (or both!) and sample some of Brown’s bold yet delicate confections. Your waistline will curse you, but your tongue will show you nothing but love.

(Hat tip: Casey Lartigue)

Related stories:

• 26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs
• How to Eat a Cupcake
• Black Society Pages
• Cake column (reg. req – BugMeNot)

(Cross-posted on The Language Artist)

Update: T-Steel: “[H]is story of how he found a passion for baking is similar to what I’m going through right now. I’m sick of information technology (on an enterprise level) and have found a passion. Now I just have to develop it.”

I was in South Carolina a couple of weeks ago and read my mother’s pile of Ebony magazines. Collecting them is a habit that seems to stick.

I would love to see more blacks start their own businesses. Talk about real empowerment! No person or government can raise your self-esteem the way blazing your own trail can. Self-employment, in my humble opinion, is the ideal way to experience freedom at its most basic level. Capitalism, for all its shortcomings, is the best system going and has made America as great as it is.

I’m sure Johnson “got” it.

Bloggers: Booker Rising, Black Informant, Michael King, Negrophile, Black Entrepreneur’s Hall of Fame…

Other sources:

• Media Life
• John H. Johnson, media giant, dead at 87
• John Johnson, Publisher of Ebony and Jet, Dies at 87
• Influential black magazine publisher John H. Johnson dies

More bloggers: Avery Tooley, The Fell Clutch of Circumstance, Nykola.com…