The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More is a book by Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine.

Chris Anderson popularized the concept in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com, Apple and Yahoo!

[4][5] The Long Tail began life in 2004 as an article for Wired after Mr. Anderson found himself blowing a pop quiz in the offices of a digital jukebox company called Ecast.

The average Wal-Mart, by contrast, carries 4,500 different CD's and the top 20 albums account for 90 percent of its music revenue.

Remove the limitations of bricks-and-mortar retailers—like scarce shelf space, which leads companies to concentrate on the most popular products—and the infrequent sellers or undistributed merchandise suddenly start to acquire more value.