Waits for inevitable Jon B Go-Betweens post....

Went out and heard Yiddish Tango music last night. crazy.

Waits for inevitable Jon B Go-Betweens post....

Fire Engines, dammit. Franz Ferdinand are a more commercial Fire Engines. OJ were way more twee and music-hall-y than FF are.

But you're right that I much prefer the Go-Betweens over Orange Juice. That's more by default though. Edwyn's voice annoys me to no end.

Franz Ferdinand are a more commercial Fire Engines.

Which pretty much makes'em Josef K, doesn't it?

Purchased yesterday: New Tom Waits, New Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and Smile.

Haven't gotten a chance to listen to any of them yet, though.

Is everybody familiar with Chris Anderson's aritlce in Wired titled The Long Tail?

Because, it dovetails very nicely with Lost In the Grooves.

Some choice quotes:

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

But most of us want more than just hits. Everyone's taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we're drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them.

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all.

What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see "Anatomy of the Long Tail"). In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."

I love that article! I sent it to everyone at work.

I love that article! I sent it to everyone at work.

It's really an interesting concept. In essence, the distribution allowed via the internet collapses geography and history into one plane. Things which were only locally available or in print at a certain time, are now constantly available. The effect is a vastly increased supply which also increases demand. It's cool.

Hey Hec, can I e-mail you with a question? And if so, is profile good?

I'm going to see the Decemberists tonight in Portland, ME. Road Trip!