Unbundling
Chris Anderson responds to a NYT column:
Nick Carr notes a NYT column that suggests that if all content is "unbundled" and forced to fend for itself, the cultural products subsidized by commercial junk may go away. Carr writes: "It's not a sure thing, in other words, that an a la carte menu will end up giving us the widest possible array of choices. Rather than promoting the creation of a "long tail" of diverse products, unbundling may end up pushing even more economic rewards to the "hits," squeezing out a lot of the good stuff." My take: unless he's referring to the number of mediocre album tracks that piggyback on the singles, I think Carr is overestimating the amount of subsidization that actually takes place.
I think he is a little off on this one. Unbundling is not risk free. If we unbundle movie scenes or movemnets in a ballet would the part be greater than the whole? I think there is a context driven by some formats which would change the artistic (rather than economic) intent by unbundling.
