THE POTENTIAL.

This Wired article is a couple months old, but I just found it and it's blown my mind. Author Chris Anderson describes the new digital media marketplace in a way that reveals how "non-mainstream" material is able to thrive in the unlimited shelfspace of the Internet. Key point:

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. 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.

"The market for books that are not even sold...is larger than the market for those that are." While Anderson focuses primarily on large digital retailers (Amazon, Netflix, iTunes), I think it's also worth looking at the role played by entertainment-related communities and hub sites like Pitckfork, All Music Guide and TV Tome. I've learned about innumerable bands from AMG's "similar artists" feature that I otherwise wouldn't have, even from Amazon's recommendations.

Still, quite an interesting analysis. With the BBC announcing that they will be offering on-demand re-runs to some broadband customers soon, I wonder if we're entering an era of micro-culture, in which we see blockbusters in all media become rarer but success stories like Interpol become more and more common.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra ::: 2005:01:17:16:02