Superstars and the Long Tail: The impact of technology on market structure in media industries

Technological change is transforming media industries. Digitization lowers the cost of recording, storage, reproduction and distribution, while computer-based editing facilitates higher quality and special effects. With electronic distribution, a vast range of content can be made available to consumers at little cost. Meanwhile, the distribution of industry production and sales appears to be shifting: the late 20th century was the era of the 'hit parade', but in the 21st attention has shifted to the 'long tail'. This paper develops a free entry model of differentiated products with endogenous quality and heterogeneous types to examine the implications of technological change for market structure, quality, and the distribution of firms in media industries. This framework can be used to assess current and future trends in media industries.