互联网的悖论：长尾理论的落空
最初，互联网被寄予厚望，人们认为它将打破传统媒体行业的壁垒，降低创作和传播成本，从而促进**长尾理论（Long Tail Theory: 指互联网时代，由于存储和分发成本降低，使得大量小众产品能够聚集起来，形成巨大的市场规模）**的实现。 Wired杂志主编Chris Anderson曾预言，互联网将赋能小众创作者，削弱大型工作室的权力，实现文化的民主化。然而，现实却与预期背道而驰，2025年，大制作的续集、翻拍和重制版作品占据了市场主导地位，似乎创意已经停滞不前。这种现象引发了人们对互联网文化发展方向的深刻反思。
Original English
Okay. It's official 2025 was the year. Creativity seemingly died. The bestselling movies like Zootopia to Jurassic World and Mission Impossible eight were all sequels, or they were remasters like Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon. Similarly, the best selling video games battlefield six, Borderlands four, Madden 26 were all big franchises or remasters like Oblivion Remastered. Meanwhile, names that we've seen for decades like Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars once again dominated the music charts. And now 2025 was not an exceptional year in that regard. Take a look at this chart. 30 years ago, only about one quarter of the top 20 movies were sequels, spinoffs, prequels, or remakes. Now it's close to 90%. Similarly, almost all of the top selling video games now come from established franchises. Even books show this very same trend. The share of top selling titles written by an already famous author is increasing each year. But wasn't the internet supposed to do the opposite? In the early 2000s, wired editor in chief Chris Anderson famously predicted that as the internet made it cheaper and cheaper to send songs, movies and games to customers around the world, this would enable niche creators to rise, while it would cause big studios to become less powerful. This theory, the theory of the long tail, was a beautiful idea the democratization of culture. So what went wrong?传统媒体的“守门人”经济学
在互联网普及之前，媒体行业受到“守门人”经济学的制约。创作者想要获得成功，必须克服重重障碍。首先，他们需要昂贵的录音设备和后期制作技术；其次，他们需要依赖唱片厂、电影公司等机构进行内容分发，而这些机构往往拥有有限的货架空间和媒体资源，因此，创作者必须与这些机构建立良好关系，或者通过获得广播时间来证明自己的受欢迎程度。这种层层筛选机制扼杀了许多潜在的优秀作品，即使像J.K.罗琳的《哈利·波特》和披头士乐队，也曾遭遇过多次拒绝。
Original English
As always on Monday macro for this video, we, a team of economists, went deep into the economic literature and summarized all the key insights that can explain why big budget sequels are bigger than ever today. And we ask a question if the rise of sequels reduced creativity or if there's actually a thriving long tail of amazing niche content that you just don't know about hiding below the surface. But to answer these questions, we first need to understand how the media industry used to work the gatekeeper economics of the pre-Internet media. Let's go back to the 1980s. Now imagine you were a singer and wanted to earn a living with your passion. The odds would be stacked against you from the very beginning. First, you needed a studio filled with super expensive equipment to record your song. Second, to distribute your song, you needed a factory to press records. Third, these records then needed to be distributed to thousands of record shops. These record shops had limited shelf space, so to convince shops to sell your record, you needed to have an existing relationship or prove you were already popular by getting airtime on the radio, for which again, you also needed the right connections. Be short before asking consumers if they like their content. Aspiring creators first had to convince gatekeepers like record labels to give them a shot. If granted funding, they could record and distribute their music. This system did produce many, many songs, movies, and games that actually sold really well and were loved by both consumers and critics. However, as you can imagine, this extra layer killed a lot of films, games, and music that we would have loved. In fact, some of our most beloved cultural icons almost got stuck with the gatekeepers. For example, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter book was first rejected by 12 publishers before it was published by Bloomsbury, and even the Beatles were rejected by nearly every major label in Europe before producer George Martin finally signed them in 1962.数字革命的双刃剑：分发成本降低与超级明星经济
数字革命彻底改变了媒体行业，主要体现在两个方面。首先，互联网使得内容分发成本几乎为零，歌曲和电影不再需要压制成CD或DVD，也不再需要通过实体店销售，只需点击几下，即可下载到iPod或笔记本电脑。其次，数字技术大幅降低了艺术创作的成本，人们可以使用iPhone拍摄电影，使用廉价的麦克风和软件录制音乐，从而绕过传统的发行渠道，实现自我资助和在线分发。然而，随着数字化进程的推进，一种新的经济模式——超级明星经济（Superstar Economics: 指在某些市场中，少数顶尖的个体能够获得不成比例的收益和关注）——开始显现。全球化和互联网的普及使得消费者能够接触到最好的游戏、音乐和电影，从而导致顶尖艺术家成为超级明星，而普通艺术家则逐渐被边缘化。
Original English
So, of course, when one the cost of recording equipment fell lower and lower, and two the internet made distribution costs almost zero. Anderson's long term prediction about the rise of niche media and the fall of big, safe blockbusters made total sense. Yet here we are today with more blockbusters than ever. So again, what happened to the fall of the gatekeepers? The digital revolution would revolutionize the media industry into main ways. First, the internet made distribution almost free. Overnight music and movies no longer had to be pressed onto CDs or DVDs, or sold in physical stores with a few clicks, songs and films could be downloaded straight into an iPod or a laptop. But at first, gatekeepers trying to hold back change. However, after piracy, platforms like Napster, The Pirate Bay and others devastated the revenue in all creative and especially the music industry. Record labels, publishers and others increasingly brought their content to legal online distribution platforms like Spotify, Netflix and Steam. Second, digital technologies dramatically reduced the cost of creating art. Suddenly, you could shoot a movie on your iPhone or record music in a home studio using inexpensive microphones and software. This allowed many artists to self-fund their work and distribute it online to millions of people, effectively bypassing traditional gatekeepers.全球化与风险规避：大制作的必然选择
全球化进一步加剧了超级明星经济的影响。随着英语在全球范围内的传播，以及亚洲等地区经济的崛起，好莱坞的票房收入逐渐从国内市场转向国际市场。为了在全球市场取得成功，电影、游戏和书籍等文化产品需要具备视觉冲击力、熟悉的故事框架和家喻户晓的明星。由于制作顶尖内容成本高昂，投资者倾向于选择安全可靠的续集和翻拍作品，以降低风险。因此，尽管独立创作蓬勃发展，但大制作商业产品仍然占据了市场主导地位。