But most of us want more than just hits. Everyone's taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we're drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them. 但是，仅有流行的东西，对于我们当中的大多数来说，是远远不够的。每一个人的口味，都会或多或少地偏离主流。而对这些主流之外的东西探索得越多，我们就会越发沉迷于此。不幸的是，在最近几十年里，这些主流之外的东西统统被扫到了角落里——为传统娱乐业服务的市场营销对此根本不屑一顾。
Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced. Not enough screens to show all the available movies. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created, and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out through either of those sets of slots. 以流行为主导的经济是旧时代的产物，在这个时代里，没有足够的库存空间来存放所有的东西，以满足每个人的需要。比如说，没有足够的货架来存放所制作的CD、 DVD和游戏；没有足够的银幕来放映所有的电影；没有足够的频道来播放所有的电视节目；也没有足够的无线电波段来播放所有的音乐；甚至没有足够的时间把所有的内容传播给用户。
This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound. 这是一个资源稀缺的世界。但是，随着在线分销和零售模式的出现，我们正迈入一个资源极大丰富的世界。这两个世界之间有着天壤之别。
To see how, meet Robbie Vann-Adib�, the CEO of Ecast, a digital jukebox company whose barroom players offer more than 150,000 tracks - and some surprising usage statistics. He hints at them with a question that visitors invariably get wrong: "What percentage of the top 10,000 titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?" Robbie Vann-Adibe 是数字点唱公司 Ecast 的首席执行官。该公司有超过15万首的曲目供其网络内的酒吧点唱。有一些统计数据非常令人惊奇，Robbie 总是爱据此来向参观者们提问，而所有的人无一例外都会答错。这个问题就是：在随便一家在线媒体商店（像Netflix，iTunes，Amazon，等等）的排行榜前1万首曲目里，那些每月至少被租出去或卖出去一次的曲目占多大百分比呢？
Most people guess 20 percent, and for good reason: We've been trained to think that way. The 80-20 rule, also known as Pareto's principle (after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who devised the concept in 1906), is all around us. Only 20 percent of major studio films will be hits. Same for TV shows, games, and mass-market books - 20 percent all. The odds are even worse for major-label CDs, where fewer than 10 percent are profitable, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. 大多数人都会猜是20%，原因很简单：我们一直都是被这样教的。二八定律，也被称为帕累托定律（由意大利经济学家Vilfredo Pareto在1906年提出），在我们周围随处可见。由顶级制片公司制作的电影中，只有20%能够成为畅销片。这种情况同样发生在电视剧、游戏和通俗读物市场上。对于顶级音乐制作公司推出的CD来说，这个百分比还会更低。根据美国唱片业协会（Recording Industry Association of America）的统计，只有不到百分之十的唱片能够盈利。
But the right answer, says Vann-Adib�, is 99 percent. There is demand for nearly every one of those top 10,000 tracks. He sees it in his own jukebox statistics; each month, thousands of people put in their dollars for songs that no traditional jukebox anywhere has ever carried. 但是，Vann-Adibe 告诉我们说，正确的答案应该是99%，也就是说，市场对于排行榜前1万首曲目当中的几乎每一首都会有所需求。Vann-Adibe 在他自己公司的统计数据中观察到了这一现象：每个月里都有数以千计的听众花钱点唱那些在其他传统点唱服务中根本就不可能找到的曲目。
People get Vann-Adib�'s question wrong because the answer is counterintuitive in two ways. The first is we forget that the 20 percent rule in the entertainment industry is about hits, not sales of any sort. We're stuck in a hit-driven mindset - we think that if something isn't a hit, it won't make money and so won't return the cost of its production. We assume, in other words, that only hits deserve to exist. But Vann-Adib�, like executives at iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, has discovered that the "misses" usually make money, too. And because there are so many more of them, that money can add up quickly to a huge new market. 人们之所以答错 Vann-Adibe 的问题，是因为这个问题的正确答案在两方面上都与人们的直觉背道而驰。第一点就是，在娱乐业中，二八定律是关于流行的定律，与销售没有任何关系。我们被禁锢在以流行为主导的惯性思维中——我们以为如果一个东西不流行的话，就不可能赚钱，也就不可能返还制作成本。也就是说，我们已经先入为主地认为，只有流行的东西，才有存在的价值。但是，Vann-Adibe，也包括iTune、Amazon和Netflix的管理者们，却发现那些非流行的东西同样能够赚钱；并且由于数量庞大，其盈利总和足以形成一个新兴的巨大市场。
With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. 对于iTunes这样的纯数字服务来说，由于不再需要货架，也没有制造成本和分销费用，卖出一件非流行品与卖出一件流行品之间没有任何区别，它们的边际利润都是一样的。流行与非流行有同样的经济基础，它们都只不过是数据库中的一条记录，等待对其需求做出响应，因而具有同样的存货价值。于是乎，流行不再是利润的唯一代名词了。
The second reason for the wrong answer is that the industry has a poor sense of what people want. Indeed, we have a poor sense of what we want. We assume, for instance, that there is little demand for the stuff that isn't carried by Wal-Mart and other major retailers; if people wanted it, surely it would be sold. The rest, the bottom 80 percent, must be subcommercial at best. 第二个原因在于业界对于人们的需求没有正确的认识。事实上，我们对于自己想要什么也并不是很清楚。比如说，我们以为一件商品，如果没有摆在沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）或其它主要零售商的货架上的话，那么对这件商品的需求量一定很低；否则沃尔玛们没有理由不卖它。至于剩下的80%，充其量也只能算是准商业化（subcommerical）的产品。
But as egalitarian as Wal-Mart may seem, it is actually extraordinarily elitist. Wal-Mart must sell at least 100,000 copies of a CD to cover its retail overhead and make a sufficient profit; less than 1 percent of CDs do that kind of volume. What about the 60,000 people who would like to buy the latest Fountains of Wayne or Crystal Method album, or any other nonmainstream fare? They have to go somewhere else. Bookstores, the megaplex, radio, and network TV can be equally demanding. We equate mass market with quality and demand, when in fact it often just represents familiarity, savvy advertising, and broad if somewhat shallow appeal. What do we really want? We're only just discovering, but it clearly starts with more. 事实上，沃尔玛并不像看上去的那样大众化，它所出售的商品都是选之又选的。一张CD，沃尔玛必须卖出超过10万张拷贝，才有可能收回成本并产生足够的利润。而只有不到1%的CD能够达到这个销量。对于那6万个想要购买最新的《Fountains of Wayne》或《Crystal Method》专辑，或是其它非主流音乐的顾客，该怎么办呢？他们只好到别的地方去找了。书店、电影院、电台和电视台等，都会同样的挑剔。我们把大众市场（mass market）与质量和需求等同起来，而事实上，它只不过代表了千篇一律的重复性、狂轰乱炸的广告效应以及泛泛而肤浅的诉求。我们到底想要什么？我们还正在探索，但很明显地，我们想要的绝对要比这多。
To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks. 为了了解我们那种不受资源稀缺的经济所限制的真正口味，让我们来看看Rhapsody吧。这是一个允许其订阅用户下载流媒体音乐的服务（属于RealNetworks)，目前提供的曲目超过73万5千首。
Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store. 如果把Rhapsody每月的统计数据绘成图表的话，你会得到一条描述需求的“幂次法则”（Power Law）曲线，它看上去跟其它音像商店的曲线很相像：最热门的曲目有非常大的需求，随着热门度的降低，需求量急剧减少。但是当你仔细研究排行榜上4万名开外的曲目时，有趣的事情发生了。4万首曲目通常是一个中等音像店的流动库存量（即最终会被售出的专辑）。沃尔玛等其他传统零售商的曲线在这里变成了零—— 或者是因为它们根本就不经营这么多的CD，或者是因为这些边缘曲目的本地爱好者们没能在商店里找到它们或者根本就没有迈进过商店的门。
The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country. 而在Rhapsody的曲线上，需求量仍然维持在零以上。不仅仅是排行榜前10万的曲目每个月都至少会被下载一次，连那些在排行榜上排到20万、30万甚至是40万的曲目，都有人下载。不管Rhapsody如何迅速地扩张它的曲目库，那些曲目总能很快地找到听众，尽管每个月可能只有寥寥的几个人，从美国的某个角落点播了这些曲目。
This is the Long Tail. 这就是长尾。
You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all. 在这个长尾上，你能找到任何东西。这里有年代久远的旧唱片，忠实的老歌迷们仍然会满怀深情地想起它们，或者年轻的一代会重新发现它们。这里有现场录音，单曲，混编曲目，甚至是唱片的封套。这里有成千上万的细分再细分的小类别：想象一下，就好比一家Tower Records音像店，只出售80年代的hair bands （70年代兴起的重金属摇滚的一种）或是 ambient dub （参见这里）。这里还有那些在进口品货架上找不到的外国曲目，以及那些名不见经传的小乐队的演奏，其中的很大一部分根本就无从通过分销渠道进入现实当中的Tower Records音像店。
