08 January 2010 — Is Being Signed to a Major Label More Important Than Ever?
There has been a lot of talk about the long tail over the past few years: the idea that, while musicians on independent labels may not be as popular as those on major labels, there is a growing audience for their music. That, taken as a whole, independent acts would account for a much greater share of sales than they did previously, due to the diminishing power of traditional music marketing (or the internet, or "social media").
Helienne Lindvall, over at The Guardian, points out that this, however, is not the case. In fact, these days, "the top 10% of artists are now responsible for 90% of all music sales".
Wikipedia's article about the long tail is interesting, particularly if you follow the footnotes. A particularly interesting couple of articles that I'd missed: Patrick Foster's article for the Times Online from December 2008, in which he says that, out of the 1.23 million singles available on a particular online retailer, "only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year". The other is by Andrew Orlowski at The Register, from November 2008, in which he suggests that the usual graph used to depict the long tail is completely unrealistic, and comes up with an alternative, slightly more chilling one (if you're an independent musician, that is).