Chris Anderson's 'The Long Tail' Theory (2006)

In 2006, Chris Anderson published a paper on how media in the online age has affected retailers to stock more variety of niche products, called 'The Long Tail' Theory. As shown in the graph above, there may be more volume of popular products, but businesses are stocking more lesser-known or 'niche' products since there being a lot more of them, thus called 'The Long Tail'.

'All those niches add up. Although none sell in huge numbers, there are so many niche products that collectively they can comprise a market rivalling the hits.'

(Anderson 2006: 53)

This theory can be applied to many industries, but the one I will be applying it to is the music industry. For example, A music store pre-internet era would stock only the most popular 'top-hitting' forms of music in their stores, while other 'underground' forms had to be sought after through various means. But now in the internet era,  these niche forms of music can be easily found and bought alongside the most popular forms of music.