Requiem for the long tail: Towards a political economy of content aggregation and fragmentation

Abstract

This article revisits the long tail phenomenon, a dozen years after it was first articulated as a model for the digital media economy. As this article illustrates, both the research evidence and the evolution of industry practice have demonstrated that the long tail phenomenon has failed to take hold to the extent expected. This article outlines the interconnected technological, institutional and economic factors that explain the decline of the long tail, and considers the implications of this decline for media policy and media research.