Netflix Finally joined Netflix this weekend. I'm tired of browsing the meagre selections at the local Blockbuster and have wanted to view a few independent files that are hard to find. Joined on Saturday and DVDs shipped on Monday and arrived today. Here are the first three selections:

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, 2002
The Stunt Man
City of God

Why aren't these films carried by Blockbuster. Well, Blockbuster lives up to it's name, carrying only those top several thousand films that are the most popular. Plus it takes a while for them to rotate their physical inventory. And yet there's money to be made in the many, many older files that only a few people want to rent. There is an excellent article on the profits to be made in distributing obscure content, The Long Tail, in Wired magazine. The long tail refers to the graph of demand for content. The blockbusters are the peak, and the demand for all the other content stretches out to form the long tail.
posted by Bruce Wright at 6:12 PM #