The last one or two decades really solved a lot of distribution problems of the long tail. You can not make a decent living playing live medieval tavern music on Twitch (and supplement with income from Spotify). Or make a living drawing fanart with DeviantArt and Patreon, publish your indie game on Steam and consoles with relative ease, get books printed in runs of 100 copies, instead of tens of thousands.
The thing the author misses is that they are looking at what big companies are doing. But big companies aren't well suited for serving the long tail, because there are fewer economies of scale in doing that. The vast majority of supply in the long tail comes from individuals or small companies, often people who start it as a hobby and notice there's enough money to do it full time.
And the economics work out, because the more underserved a niche the higher the prices that are acceptable. A teddy bear at the corner shop is $10, but plushies in fandoms where little official merchandise exists go for ten to fifty times that.
I agree and see the long tail primarily as a "phase shift" from firms back to individuals.
Niche works used to be indulged by media corporations as gambles. They would let the whole thing be fully produced right from the beginning, though often compromising authorial vision in the process or pulling the plug early. Then audiences would gamble with cash to view the work. Occasionally one broke through and you had a surprise blockbuster.
Now much more is in the hands of the actual creator, and more stuff is "view for free" and payment is more often driven by secondary merchandising, creating community space or other elements that are ancillary to the work. The average production quality is lower and the medium is often platform defined(social media engagement is now a major component of audience building), but as a creator you have a gamut of choices to stitch together into some business - often one that bypasses gatekeepers. While blockbusters still exist, they're "hollowed out" because most of their good ideas have to be borrowed now.
The actual market for the content only became bigger to the extent that we can saturate our eyeballs.
The thing the author misses is that they are looking at what big companies are doing. But big companies aren't well suited for serving the long tail, because there are fewer economies of scale in doing that. The vast majority of supply in the long tail comes from individuals or small companies, often people who start it as a hobby and notice there's enough money to do it full time.
And the economics work out, because the more underserved a niche the higher the prices that are acceptable. A teddy bear at the corner shop is $10, but plushies in fandoms where little official merchandise exists go for ten to fifty times that.