Aging Rockers vs. the Long Tail

What if they had looked at attendance at concerts instead of revenues? I'm guessing that the increase in disparity is more because the geezer bands can now charge hundreds of dollars per ticket to boomers reliving their past glory than a shift in attendance patterns.

I'm a young'un and I think the geezer bands are far better than the crap that is released today.

Perhaps the long tail is artificially excluded from total concert revenue in their measure.

This sounds right. There are more "concerts" in every city then ever before. Because there are more bands then ever before, and booking/going on tour is easier and cheaper. Almost every one I know has been in a band, and gone on some kind of a tour, at some level. Including myself.

However, "concerts" are not held in stadiums. They are held in bars and small venues, with general admission at ticket prices that are at least an order of magnitude cheaper then you would pay to see The Police.

Plus, most of the blockbuster concerts that people 40 and under go to these days are festivals, in which a $200 ticket buys you hundreds of bands. Think SXSW.

Conclusion: I would put $100 on a hole in the data, and distortions at the top.

I thought the long-tail just meant niche items will grow, not that the top ones will shrink (maybe I should read the book?). I expect the middle to peak, and the first and second standard deviations to succumb to the long tail. It's not the top bands that will lose, it's the middling bands forced on the public by record companies that will lose to upstart artists who post music online. Therefore, the number of widely heard bands shrinks to only the truly popular, therefore they increase their revenue, while everyone else has to split what's left. Shared experiences decline with the rise of the long-tail, so that may be an additional factor in its favor.

It has been a little while since I've read the 'long tail' story, but I think of it as being an aspect of the information-based economy. Deep catalogs + cheap shelf space + efficient search. I think it applies better to recordings of music, say, rather than live music performance.