The long tail, best gadgets for Xmas, and how a Canadian island may foretell the fate of the Amazon
This week’s Science and Technology pages are up at The Independent: I’ve written about the long tail effect, where digital goods can sell forever - and even “unpopular” ones sell well (did you know that all of the 1.2 million tracks on Apple’s iTunes Music Store in the US have been downloaded at least once, and that more than half of Amazon’s sales are of items ranked below 130,000 in its sales ranking?).
Charlotte Ricca-Smith has the best gadgets of 2004. And in Science, Kate Ravilious explains what might happen to the Amazon as global warming gathers page.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- The long tail, shortened from 57 per cent to... about 20 per (15 August 2005; score: 87.84%)
- "Tails are cool" (26 October 2005; score: 65.98%)
- Done a book review on Amazon? .... oh, so you have (18 November 2005; score: 51.08%)
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December 1st, 2004 at 2:12 pm
It’s all well and good that a back catalogue of artist’s music can be made available easily and cheaply, but the issue for myself is whether these benefits will actually be passed on to the consumer or not. All of the logistical cost reductions that online distribution provides currently go straight into the pockets of the distributors/publishers. From the point of view of the artist, this can be good too, as they get a higher cut of the profits in certain scenarios (though not all). The exemplar par excellance of this is Steam, Valve Software’s online distrbution system; it ends up charging the same for a product that has no manual, and any physical copy must be made by the end user. For me, this is the more interesting issue for online distribution.
December 1st, 2004 at 4:57 pm
The only downward pressure on price online that I’m seeing comes from the pirate networks. They’re the ones who got the record networks to come online in the first place (if we’re honest). It’s harder to see how sites competing among each other can force prices further down, when they need every penny to keep going.
December 2nd, 2004 at 4:23 pm
Steam is a nightmare - you pay the same cost for a basic steam download as you do for getting the shiny silver thing in a box. That is a rip off in my book - downloads should be cheaper as there is no extra production cost. Steam is also a complete hassle and I will not be buying anymore steam powered games after my experiences with Half life 2. Horrendous.
December 5th, 2004 at 4:06 pm
On-line services may well appear to have zero (or near zero) distribution costs but there are costs in providing the development, infrastructure, marketing, personnel, finance, etc., as any other company.
But the main point I wish to make is that people (and companies) still use a cost plus pricing methodology - i.e. add up all the materials and operating costs and then add a percentage margin to cover overheads and profits. In an online world with virtual prodocts the percentage can seem huge.
But companies are now moving to value based costings. It’s a challenge as they need to identify what value the product has to the buyer/consumer. Does it save them time? provide status? etc. And this may vary between groups of buyers (business vs individuals) and the individuals themselves (we all have the classic time vs money dilema).
I’m currently running a research survey into how people *feel* about the different pricing tactics used by companies, including those operating in the internet world. Rather than use boring questions it uses little scenarios or vignettes. Have a go, it takes just 4 mins. http://www.ethicalpricing.info
June 6th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Ironically The Independent will probably miss out on the Long Tail effect as it’s archived are so heavily paid-for. Or am I wrong about that, and they have some clever tech to allow in search bots?
June 12th, 2005 at 10:31 pm
I expect The Independent, like most other aware sites, lets in bots which identify themselves as coming from the big search engines to rummage around as they like. So they’ll turn up on the search engine listings, but you’ll have to pay to see them yourself. Unless your browser identifies itself as a search bot…