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.