At the very least this essay is disingenuous. Gioia claims,"The Hollywood studios are even more obsessed with the Short Tail than the streaming platforms. Back in 2006, Anderson predicted the End of the Blockbuster —but what has happened since then?"
What Anderson actually wrote: "For music, at least, this looks like the end of the blockbuster era." [my italics]
Music and film are entirely different. For one thing, a newly released song on Spotify is entirely identical, bar recency, to a 30 year old song, they're both 4Mb aac files or whatever. Whereas the theatrical release at a cinema is qualitatively a much different experience to streaming on your iPad, even if the underlying media is identical. Anyway by their nature, just looking at contemporary theatrical releases in isolation doesn't work, because the long tail argument is about the back catalog and niche releases. If you include the back catalog, i.e. theatrical releases + streaming movies + DVDs purchases/rentals, then long tail still holds, and you can see that by the steadily decreasing share of revenue that the theater has versus all outlets. The North American domestic box office has plummeted since COVID, but taking the last normal year, 2019, it stood at $11 billion. Compare that with Netflix revenue of $20 billion. Not apples to apples, since Netflix is global, it has its own blockbusters, and its catalog is increasingly non-theatrical in appeal. But there are also plenty of other streaming services. All things considered, I think it's fair to still conclude that that smaller, niche product and back catalog continues to eat away at an increasing share of total revenue.
Parenthetically, I just have to say I'm annoyed by Gioia's whole "Honest Broker" shtick. A true straight shooter doesn't have to advertise their honesty, they just speak their minds and others will see the truth for themselves. It feels a bit astroturfy how much play this guy gets on HN. For hot takes on a 16 year old book?
What Anderson actually wrote: "For music, at least, this looks like the end of the blockbuster era." [my italics]
Music and film are entirely different. For one thing, a newly released song on Spotify is entirely identical, bar recency, to a 30 year old song, they're both 4Mb aac files or whatever. Whereas the theatrical release at a cinema is qualitatively a much different experience to streaming on your iPad, even if the underlying media is identical. Anyway by their nature, just looking at contemporary theatrical releases in isolation doesn't work, because the long tail argument is about the back catalog and niche releases. If you include the back catalog, i.e. theatrical releases + streaming movies + DVDs purchases/rentals, then long tail still holds, and you can see that by the steadily decreasing share of revenue that the theater has versus all outlets. The North American domestic box office has plummeted since COVID, but taking the last normal year, 2019, it stood at $11 billion. Compare that with Netflix revenue of $20 billion. Not apples to apples, since Netflix is global, it has its own blockbusters, and its catalog is increasingly non-theatrical in appeal. But there are also plenty of other streaming services. All things considered, I think it's fair to still conclude that that smaller, niche product and back catalog continues to eat away at an increasing share of total revenue.
Parenthetically, I just have to say I'm annoyed by Gioia's whole "Honest Broker" shtick. A true straight shooter doesn't have to advertise their honesty, they just speak their minds and others will see the truth for themselves. It feels a bit astroturfy how much play this guy gets on HN. For hot takes on a 16 year old book?