By James Pew

Three Essential Studio Manifesto Concepts

1. The Long Tail

2. 1,000 True Fans

3. The Eight Generative Values Better Than Free

The Long Tail

"The potential aggregate size of the many small markets, may someday rival that of the existing large markets" - Chris Anderson

By selling less of more. By selling millions of different niche products. This is the Long Tail theory in a nutshell.

HMV sells a lot of mainstream music at their retail locations. These mainstream titles are what make up the "Head of the Demand Curve." At the head a massive amount of revenue is generated from a relatively small number of titles. After the Head - the Long Tail. Which is made up of all the non-mainstream niche titles. In the Long Tail a massive amount of revenue is generated from fewer sales of more titles.

There are millions of indie bands in the long tail.

HMV doesn't have the physical space to stock the CDs of every indie band in North America. But an online retailer is not limited by physical warehouse space. The theory of the Long Tail is that the sum of all the revenue generated from sales of the Long Tail niche products is greater than the sum of all the sales of mainstream products at the head of the demand curve.

How people can discover long tail music

Whether its iTunes or Amazon, Last FM, Pandora, Mufin, or many of the others - the new way to discover music is through the recommendation engines built into those platforms. These are the pieces of software