Economics Of Online Distribution: Who Benefits From Long Tail Aggregators?

Online distribution now provides the opportunity or everyone to be an author, whether that be an online film maker or a new thriving jazz ensemble. With the help of customers themselves, specialized search engines, directories, and theme-specific content clearinghouses make it now easy to discover new books, songs, movies and other content previously inaccessible or very hard to find.

But who benefits the most from this new online distribution venues made possible by a fast growing number of content aggregators and filtering companies?

If you, like me, have been closely following the recent writing, research and conversations centered around Long Tail economics, you may have run into this very interesting article by a venture capitalist (and blogger) who recently covered the topic on his own blog. While I have covered the broader Long Tail subject in breadth and depth in the past, my interest was caught again by the reading of this good article by David Hornik, who warned authors and indies not too get too excited about the potential of the Long Tail, as the true benefits emanating form it would all acrrue to those filtering and aggregating the Long Tail and really not to those making it up.

[read more...]