The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article [1] to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of those business allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or “non-hit” items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail.
-Wikipedia

So how does the Long Tail apply to your career as a guitarist? Watch this great video of George Howard, music industry expert, explaining what it means to you.

Because we live in such a connected world, you never know where or when something of yours will rise to the top and take off. It is important to utilize many forms of exposure tactics in the modern world of music. Just getting that nice review by a blogger or indie radio host could make the difference.

Are you putting your concert videos out there on your myspace pages? Putting a new video up every week or two?

Are you writing articles for GuitarPlayerZen.com, helping others maximize their guitar potential and demonstrating your expertise as well as providing links to your websites and cds? (You should be! It’s easy. Just register, login, and begin writing away.)

Are you uploading your guitar videos, pictures and mp3s into our OnlineGuitarNetwork.com?

This George Howard video really puts out a great point that you never know where you will find fans and income from. Just like the hiking book that took off suddenly thanks to Amazon’s Long Tail, that one video of you jamming for that charity a year ago or that one inspiring article you wrote could be seen by the right eyes at the right time.

Even if you expect something to not be as successful as your other work, someone will still love it more than anything. And there is one extra die-hard fan for you that is going to follow and support your career. The best bands in the history of music all had at least one song or album that wasn’t their greatest work.

Sure 80% of your business is going to come from 20% of your fans, but if you completely disregard those other 80 percenters, you are limiting your potential.

So release those videos, those recorded jams, your first song you ever recorded as a child.

Write those articles. Be creative. Find other ways to get yourself out there to different mediums. Your music career will thank you for it!

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