So, how do you feel about Led Zeppelin, really?

It must be an interesting dilemma for Mr. BB and other WV staffers. Do they expand horizontally or vertically?

A recent publication — The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson — suggests that wide is the way to go. An article-length version of this book appeared in Wired last year. (Mr. Anderson is an editor at Wired.)

His premise, based on the experience at iTunes, later verified by others, is that the Internet has produced a new business model. It's an old saw in retail that any store gets 80 percent of its sales from only 20 percent of its stock, and limited sales from the rest. There is a demand curve that starts high with the favored items, and tailed off downward for items of less demand. A no-brainer, right?

But iTunes' experience found a fascinating spin on that. Given the Internet audience, which is HUGE, it pays iTunes to load up every possible song it can get its mitts on. Why? Well, consider an obscure 1960s song like "Little Black Egg" by the Nightcrawlers. It was their one and only "hit," barely cracked the Hot 100 (Number 85 in 1967), and is never played on oldies radio. Yet, a few of us who graduated from high school in 1967 remember the song fondly, and would pay 99 cents to download it for the memories.

There might be only five or ten of us in the country willing to do so BUT there are an awful lot of songs that only five or ten people would be willing to download. In fact, when you add all these low-response tunes together across the whole Internet audience, they total as much in aggregate as the juicy end of the chart where the huge downloads for few artists like.

That's the "long tail" of fairly unpopular songs of Anderson's title. Since they can add a song with minimal cost and effort (and only have to do it once), it pays them to cast the widest net possible.

I note where iTunes sold its billionth song recently. That makes the long tail - in aggregate - worth hundreds of millions of dolars.

I've just read back through the 38 previous pages, and the number of different bands requested by the few WV member posters is already into several hundred. If, as they say, they're going to make pay downloads available soon, it pays them to include everybody from Jefferson Airplane and the Dead to Miles Davis to John Anderson to Devil's Kitchen.

Sorry - long post. I'll just add my voice for War with Eric Burden (saw the weekend concert in Oct. 1970 with Seals & Crofts and Clover) and Joy of Cooking.

Thanks for listening, and thanks WV staffers and Bill's memory.