Back in August the reviews of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail were popping up and the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes had a critical review of the hit book. Gomes called out the "current popularity of Web utopian fantasies about the way sales of niche products can rival those of hits." Looking at the economics of the long tail, I wrote that aggregators and distributors, not creators. Makes perfect sense. Somebody, something must handle the incredible volume of content. Per-transaction margins will be low, but volume will be high. Pennies to a creator are just pennies. Aggregators, though, will get mountains of pennies.

Now a Bear Sterns analyst has come out with a report that says the sweet spot of the content supply chain may be in the middle. The tile of the report is "The Long Tail: Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content Are King In Entertainment." It tracks the changes in content distribution over the years (TV stations, cable, Internet).

"Most believe the balance of power is shifting to content owners," it says. "However, technology is altering economics of content creation as well." Lower costs and greater flexibility in the creation, storage and distribution of content have resulted in a proliferation of content. The result is what Bear Sterns calls an "economy of abundance." Filters are "required to connect users with content that appeals to their interests" and aggregators such as Google, AOL and Yahoo are tagged as viable competitors, but lack a detailed long tail strategy, says the report.