A more appropriate question for mobile content is “where is the long tail?” (The long tail is the body of content that is not in the “hit” category.) At the moment most content is still sold through operators portals, despite a concerted effort by some industry players to get it off-deck. So when they do who will really benefit? David Hornik (a venture capitalist) argues that the money is in the aggregating and filtering businesses, and not in the content. He uses the example of a musician, saying that they are not going to make the jump from obscure to Top 40, which I think misses the point. Having an easily accessable long tail enables consumers to find songs that aren’t in the record stores, and therefore increases the money to artists — selling an extra hundred songs a month may not mean much to Virgin Records, but there’s a lot of musicians who would welcome it.
The same applies to mobile content — there’s a limited amount of space on the carriers deck, especially in the useful positions, and even in mobile portals. Most mobile content producers are attempting to sell their wares in the “long tail”, and as the aggregation and filtering businesses improve so will the sales of these developers. I guess from a VC point of view the interesting money is in aggregators and filterers, but content producers will also benefit a lot. (via our sister site, PaidContent)
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