The long tail

The new supply mechanism didn't just lower the barrier for consumers, but for suppliers too.

Suddenly there were not just the three female space - hockey anime artists, but at just the moment they started selling, a bunch of new ones jumped into the market.

However easy the distribution became, it didn't alter the basic consumption appetite. A punter can only read certain number of books in a period, and watch a certain number of films, and afford a certain number of goods. The Internet redistributed supply and demand; it didn't fundamentally change it.

It made distribution easier for old media too, and they had the advantage of scale.

The long tail assumes a naive, positivist view of demand - that there exists, in abstract, pre-formed in The mind of the consumer and independent of any market or sell side signals, a desire to watch female space - hockey anime.

But that is not how humans work. We are badgered by social pressures, many manufactured by the sell side who now has this enormous machine to collate, gather and propagate consumer desire.

Any human has limited consumption capacity. Even those with a yen for female space - hockey anime will also like science fiction, field sport, cartoons, and almost certainly Harry Potter, Marvel, and Downton Abbey. She still has to make a choice: if I watch three films this year, which will they be?

The major studios will be focusing all their energy on ensuring that their movie is the one you see.

The FSHA film is not likely to be the only film a fellow sees. The guy who watches that kind of thing isn't a one-film-a-year guy. One-film-a-year guys go see Harry Potter or star wars. He may feel he needs to see marvel to keep up with all the cultural references, memes and so on that spin off it.

Does this also answer the question of why it is not easier to get hold of old movies on Netflix. There is a huge catalogue of of movies dating back to to 1900, many of which may be be easy to licence, which it ought to be trivial to release on a subscription service. Wouldn't the studios owning those licences want to do that? No, if that meant that customers were paying less money to watch old movies rather than paying more money to watch new material. There is, obviously, a natural Monopoly Here, and and owners of of intellectual property are incentivised to restrict the availability of of cheap material full stops why offer table water if you can charge for mineral water?

you can't please everyone

Another articulation of the fallacy that we have banished all risk.

you can't please everyone