For the uninitiated, this is the definition of Long Tail from Wikipedia:
The Long Tail or long tail is a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. The concept was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy.[1][2] Anderson elaborated the Long Tail concept in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (ISBN 1-4013-0237-8).
The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying this strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of "non-hit items" is called the Long Tail.
In a nutshell, the concept stresses on making everything available to the customer- however hit or flop, good or bad, awesome or nuts you think it may be; because there is an audience for everything. And profit can be made by selling even the items in the 20 % lower tail.
And in India, the Short Film Industry is applying this concept successfully. They are uploading their content on various dedicated film video sites such as nautanki.tv, rajshri.com, filmaka.com etc. They get paid per view and good films, made on a shoestring budget of Rs 2000-3000, are getting up to a lakh online views. What's more: These sites put the short films in various film festivals across the world and if your film gets selected you get paid depending upon the level it reaches in the festival. It benefits the site in turn as viewers from across the world visit it to watch the film. Do check out the TOI article which describes this in detail. I believe that the long tail model can be applied even to the old Bollywood films. Of course, it would be another source of revenue for the filmmakers. But for us film-lovers, it would open the Pandora's Box of those good ol' classics. Also this is a manifesto which Chris Anderson had written about the Long Tail. Hope you enjoy reading it!
