The best thing about this book is the title. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to learn about how to stop parasites? Especially when they are digital! But the book offers little more than the simplistic model of payment is good for copyrighted materials – and pirating is bad.

One of the ways that I judge books that talk about culture and copyright is based on how fans and fandom are written about. And this book doesn’t disappoint, by carefully discussing elements of fan culture and their importance to the continued economic success of multiple media properties. I joke. There is no mention of fandom at all, beyond a page-long dismissive mention of the concept of 1,000 true fans, no mention of consumer buy-in, nothing beyond “you parasite.” In a book about digital culture, this is an EPIC fail.

I also judge books in this oeuvre by their description of Nine Inch Nails’ effort to release music via Creative Commons and other more open means, including the Creative Commons-licensed albums The Slip and Ghosts I-IV, and the label-delayed therefore placed online for the free remix album, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (AKA Year Zero Remixed). And lest we forget, Trent Reznor decried his labels at every opportunity, including praising fans for … wait for it, engaging in illegal downloading, Levine’s “parasitic” behavior, extorting them to “steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing.”

But Levine’s description of T. Rez is:

“the acts that have most successfully used free music to promote major tours –Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails—have benefited from millions of dollars’ worth of marketing from their respective major labels.”

What ho, Jeeves.

If you think I’m playing the detail game, Levine calls out William Patry, one of the pre-eminent copyright scholars for getting the sales of Grand Theft Auto wrong, and then intimates that he would not have the viewpoints he does, but for being Google’s attack dog. Correlation does not imply causation – and Patry held the same views before starting his present job. Levine’s anti-scholar bent is not just directed at Patry. One of the most detrimental aspects of this book is the implication throughout that academics (and academic institutions, like Harvard and Stanford; and non-profits, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons) that are not copyright extremists are activists and in the pocket of big companies (read: Google and its ilk). He directly calls Pamela Samuelson an “activist [,] who wanted to weaken copyright in other ways” (26), calls Jessica Litman someone who ignores the law (46), but saves the majority of his directed fury towards academia towards Lawrence Lessig.

There are actual well-reasoned critiques of Lessig’s work – but this isn’t one of them.  And to publish a book in 2011, critiquing Lessig with nary a mention of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, where in 2008 Lessig spends a whole book discussing the ways that remix culture can work with traditional media so everyone makes money, is just intellectually lazy. Or deliberate.

Because I am *that* sort of reader, I checked the acknowledgements, which include mentions of Fred von Lohman, Jane Ginsburg, and Marybeth Peters – all huge figures in the area of digital culture and copyright. Highly surprisingly, there are no quotes in the book from them –  except for a brief snippet of Peters’ congressional testimony in her role as the Register of Copyrights, but nothing from the interviews Levine conducted.

In an odd way, I actually prefer Mark Helprin’s “alone in my room, I reign supreme” copyright-should-last-forever-because-I-am-a-brilliant-author diatribe because he was straightforward about what he wanted. And if you want to read about the dangers of Google, read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything. If you want to read about how the music industry took things in the wrong direction, read Greg Kot’s Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.

Summary: Not recommended. Save the entertainment and publishing industry through paywalls! Google bad!

I’ma let you finish reading, but one remaining point only for copyright nerds – Levine quotes David Nimmer saying that anyone who says that fair use is a right rather than an affirmative defense to copyright infringement “are just doing that to emphasize their politics” – this issue is still being debated by the intellectual property scholars. For example, Wendy Gordon & Daniel Bahls, The Public’s Right to Fair Use: Amending Section 107 to Avoid the Fared Use Fallacy, 2007 Utah L. Rev. 619, 626 (2007): “This Article seeks to remind the legal community that fair use is a “right[]: it is an existing liberty, to which the public has an enduring entitlement, and which deserves significant weight.”

It’s the end of the year and time for one of my favorite annual book purchases, the DeCapo Best Music Writing series. It’s a great time to catch up with all the music writing I have generally ignored for the past year. (Not on purpose!)  It’s also an excellent opportunity to go back in time and discover some of the releases that may have slipped under my radar in the past 10 or so months.

But I haven’t been ignoring music, it’s just that my attention has been more focused on music streaming platforms like Spotify and Rdio to get my music, or (very) occasionally poking my head into Turntable.fm. The popularity of music discovery startups has been one of the hotter tech stories of the past year , with Spotify’s celebrated arrival in the U.S. and controversial integration with Facebook, not to mention this summer’s love affair with Turntable.fm among music bloggers and social media folks.

But even with the popularity of these services, I can’t honestly say that I discovered more new music this year, or made more informed music buying choices because of them. Honestly, I think I discovered more new music when MySpace was the only game in town for burgeoning bands to share tunes. Thanks to Facebook, I know how little most of my social circle and I have in common when it comes to music preference. More broadly, I think the music startup explosion hasn’t really done much to promote new music discovery at all, but mostly encourages an echo chamber of musical tastes where friends and acquaintances share the same small pool of artists, bands, and songs with each other.

My other big problem with algorithmic-based music discovery platforms like Pandora is that musical taste (like food, and romance/dating) is often too complicated for an algorithm. Music communities are a huge arbiter of  musical tastes; the shared, collective sense of identity, emotion and memory that comes from music fandom is just as important as musical, style, production, and genre when determining listening preferences.

A couple of music startups do address this. Turntable.fm opens up that closed network of music sharing a bit more, with its real time, chat-room like element that allows for moments of serendipity, and more importantly, real time conversation and opinion sharing. One of the elements that stands out about Soundcloud’s approach (I SWEAR I don’t work for Soundcloud, even though I talk about it all the time) is the company’s use of community managers to act as music/sound curators while also encouraging in-person and local community building in the form of meetups.

And of course, music blogs remain a major player in online music fandom. I’ve written about my take on the future of music criticism before.  Music blogs like Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan don’t appear to have the same level of  cultural authority  as tastemakers that they did several years ago but still remain well-read. And it seems odd in the age of social everything, that Pitchfork still doesn’t allow reader comments. But do blogs compare with the ability to sample, rate and share music almost instantly? Will music blogging and long-form writing be disrupted by music startups the way food/restaurant criticism was disrupted by Yelp?

I can’t see Rdio or Soundcloud ever replacing the experience of music fandom or reading writing music criticism for me personally, but I have seen it impact how I consume music on a daily basis. I’m curious to hear from other music junkies:  has Spotify/Pandora/Rdio/Soundcloud replaced music blogging or personal recs for you in finding new music?

I don’t watch a whole lot of television these days. I get most of my entertainment online, and when I do watch television programming, it’s on Hulu or Netflix. My favorite TV show of 2011 isn’t a traditional television show at all, however. It’s a web series called the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. The best way I can describe this show is “Black Grownup Daria” ABG chronicles the daily life of J, a socially inept black woman in her 20′s as she navigates work and dating in Los Angeles.

For obvious reasons, this show resonates with me. For all that I enjoy shows like Community and Parks and Recreation, ABG is the first time I’ve seen anything even remotely reflecting my life presented in such a format. So naturally, I’m a bit protective of the show. (The last web series I loved this much was “McCourt’s in Session” and there was only three episodes of those, so ABG is a vast improvement on a number of levels.)

In the past few months, the show’s popularity has soared. Issa Rae, the show’s creator/star has been on dozens of magazines and blogs and even CNN recently.  It’s like Issa Rae has become the black Felicia Day, and I love it. When the show took to Kickstarter to raise funds to complete additional episodes, ABG fans stepped up to the plate and raised more than the projected goal of $30,000 to complete ABG’s season. Once again, Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans model proves itself replicable:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

I don’t know if Issa Rae is yet making a living from ABG, but she is able to continue her work, improve the show and gain new fans. She’s really stepped up her game when it came to marketing and fan engagement, the college tour is a great idea, the t-shirts/merch are awesome and I love their approach of giving all the ABG characters their own fan pages. Issa Rae knows what she’s doing and understands what the fans want.

As the show’s popularity and buzz increases, there’s been talk of ABG moving to television. When the show first started, I was rooting for Issa Rae to be discovered by a network and picked up for TV, so maybe, for the first the first time in my TV watching life, I can see TV show that reflects my life in some way (what a concept) but with the success of the Kickstarter campaign, and the continuing grassroots support of ABG, I’ve begun to wonder if ABG (or other web series) needs traditional TV at all. TV execs like to pat themselves on the back for having a show with two black leads, but then only keep that show on for three weeks (though, to be honest “Undercovers” did suck) If fans continue to support Issa and ABG (i.e. if supporters become subscribers) who needs traditional TV?

My thoughts have echoed this blogger, who breaks down some of the math:

“…set up a website where fans can pay $5/mo for unlimited viewing. That’s a reasonable $60/year for each of us, and since a show like ABG has at least 25000 fans, that’s a generous $125,000/mo for them. ABG and Ktown Cowboys have shown us that we don’t need to see special effects or massive explosions, or ridiculous, over-the-top wardrobes. We just need to see us. We just need to see people who look like us, sound like us, and behave the way we do in real life, without someone else’s agenda coloring the script. I watch a 10-minute episode of ABG and it sends me straight to Cloud Nine. I end each episode feening for the next one. I see a dark chocolate, natural-haired black woman being witty and holding it down on her own show and I am catapulted into heaven.”

I think “K” is onto something, I love the idea of fan supported online series becoming the rule rather than the exception. And regardless , I think TV execs could takes notes on how popular web series like ABG are marketed to fans. However, I still want to see Issa Rae get the opportunity to create for mainstream television. Mainstream television needs this, more than ever.

Why? I saw “The Help” last month. I was on the fence about seeing it for the entire summer, I had conflicting feelings about the film from the time I heard of its release (I’ve not read the book) Once again we have a Civil Rights era film about Black people but written and directed by white people, and I was bracing myself for some painful stereotypes.

As I watched and enjoyed the film, I was still settled with a growing sense of unease. It’s 2011, Viola Davis and/or Octavia Spencer will likely get Oscar nominations for playing the same type of role that Hattie McDaniel played when she won in 1940. To be fair, Abileen and Minny are certainly no Mammy stereotypes; they’re well-acted and three dimensional characters.

But still, in 2011, this is one of the few times in Hollywood where African-American women are central within a story. That or Tyler Perry movies, and please let’s not go there today. That’s a whole other post. I can count on one hand the times I can walk into a movie theater or turn on TV and see black women’s lives portrayed where they’re not someone’s afterthought. And even then, it’s too often rooted in the past, or the convenient Hollywood narrative of the Strong Black Woman: challenged but unbowed, tough but maternal, drawing from superhuman reserves of emotional tenacity to face hatred and violence. With her sass.

Awkward Black Girl is the present. It’s the future. It’s the story of a black women as she lives and loves now. Awkward, funny, smart, wacky, romantic, vulnerable. And it’s only one story that can possibly be told from the many diverse stories of black women. Stories that have more “universal” resonance that Hollywood seems to think.

So yeah, do I want to see that on TV? In the movies? Hell yeah I do. I wish Issa Rae the very best of luck with ABG and her future endeavors. I think she can make a splash on TV while still keeping ABG real for the web.

Interesting news for both fans of NIN and followers of fan culture, fan-works and ownership. The grassroots fan organized video production collective This One is On Us made some waves for their organization and dedication to documenting Nine Inch Nails last tour with high-quality video and audio recording. As mentioned in a TLF post from last year, this was done with the  approval of Trent Reznor, who loosened venue taping policies so that fans could participate. And as we presented at MIT, Nine Inch Nails has been highly supportive of fan remix/reuse.

With NIN on an indefinite hiatus, the TOIOU  fan community has announced a “rebranding” of the collective, now with  a broader, pan-fandom focus. The organization will no longer be NIN specific, based on the collective’s early draft of a mission statement, that states:

We aim to restore live music as a shared, passionate entity, and work with those who embrace new media and the realities of the Internet to build on their relationship with fans through collaboration and to create unique documents of their live events. Providing organizational, technical and financial support, we encourage fan communities to plan and execute first-rate film and audio recordings, and turn the resulting content into professional quality releases.

In addition, the organizers intend to formally establish TOIOU as a non-profit organization.

Interesting news, and worth watching. TOIOU was able to exist and succeed based in part because of the unusually collaborative and open relationship between Reznor and his fans. If TOIOU is to take this model and attempt to replicate it in other music fandoms, particularly for mainstream, big-ticket musical artists with particularly devoted live fanbases,  but a more restrictive approach to fan relations. I expect challenges for the group in future.

Metallica and their historically tight rein on fan-produced live recordings comes to mind because the band has been charging members for high-quality recordings of live performances for years now (yet they have also previously made money from fan recordings). Will TOIOU become a sort of fan advocacy organization? One that assists  fan-producers with the infrastructure support to pull of what the NIN fandom did? The current draft of the mission statement seems to imply this, but it is, admittedly, a work in progress.

YouTube has become a sort of live music library where fans (including myself) may share and upload videos of their favorite musician’s latest performances. For live music junkies there’s opportunity in this.  For record labels and big-ticket live music  promoters, there is a perceived threat. TOIOU has a lot of work cut our for it, but I am excited to see where it goes next.

So to start my series of posts about SXSW, I’m starting with a discussion of one of the books focused on during one of the panel presentations, Scott Kirsner’s latest work, Fans, Friends and Followers. If you are looking for a book on living up to the 1,000 true fans philosophy, this isn’t it.

As he states in the book,

there has never been a noisier, more competitive time to try to make art, entertain people, and tell stories. Everyone is doing it, and so there is an incredible surplus of content in every art form.

Surplus of content? This strongly implies that the limiter to content is the individual, rather than the possibilility of different individualss and groups with different tastes.

While I appreciate what Kirshner is trying to do, by helping artists reach their audience — there is a reason why this blog is called The Learned Fangirl — because we are concerned about how fans are being viewed by each other and outsiders.

So how does Kirshner describe the role of fans?

The very term “audience” may be on its way to obsolescence. Some artists prefer to think of themselves as cultivating a “community,” attracting “supporters,” or organizing and motivating a “street team.” Some like the term “fan base,” while others may choose to use the terms “collaborators” or “co-conspirators.”

Unfortunately, the role of fans — both throughout the book and in the admittedly brief presentation — is to be active participants  that can be removed from the process at any point should the artist choose. He never quite says this directly, but everything is directed at the artist — nothing on what happens when fans feel (or actually have) a claim of ownership over parts of their fandom.

And perhaps its my background, but I found the “reap all of the grain from the field” approach to be shortsighted. The only mention of rights occurs briefly, within a formal business arrangement, or passing references to Creative Commons.

The interviews that are the backbone of the book are interesting, but without a larger, overall helpful structure for artists, this shouldn’t be an end-point.

Recommended: Only for those that want to read inspiring stories. Or are newly thinking about how to become a famous artist.

Around  about the end of last year,  all the big shit web 2.0 blogs started to pull together their prediction list for 2010. I was very close to pulling up such a list myself until I concluded that there was absolutely nothing that I wanted to put out there as a sure-fire prediction? Everything in this online world changes way to quickly for anyone to have a real handle on what the next big thing is, and it’s all subjective anyway.

But yesterday, i started thinking about many of the online trends in fandom, and specifically many of the topics we’ve covered here at The Learned Fangirl,  and they all seem to point to a particular trend that may come to a head in coming year.  So, here’s my one prediction for 2010:

This year will be the year where fans/fan labor becomes a major, influential player in online (and offline) entertainment.

Of course, this has already been happening. Recent TLF posts on anime fansubbing and streaming video have explored how not-quite-legal  fan labor has impacted how corporate media producers distribute their products. Earlier in the year, we talked about the Nine Inch Nails crowdsourced fan concert video that was officially condoned and encouraged by Trent Reznor. We also talked about a fan-driven  campaign that kept the NBC spy drama Chuck on the air (for at least this season) while managing to raise money for charity as well.

Between anecdotes like this and the seemingly unabated growth and influence of social media marketing – an industry where customer input and interaction is not just key, but crucial to  success, I think we’re gonna see a real push toward “professionalizing” fandom in a way that we’ve never seen before.  Particularly in the music industry we’ll see fan culture and user-generated fan content become integrated into marketing and public relations campaigns as a first line of defense, rather than an afterthought.

And not in the form of goofy contests, either, but really taking the street team approach to marketing seriously and using fan and fan labor as a dedicated and intentful marketing strategy.

I’m not sure if this is always good thing. Maybe this is a bit quaint, but as a fan, I don’t like to think that my genuine enthusiasm over a product/TV show/band  has the potential to be  exploited or commodified in such a blatant way.  But the fact is i’ve been a willing participant in that process for a few years now, every time I post on my blog  about some new song I love, or become a fan of some product/actor/organization  on Facebook. It’s just a lot easier now for entertainment professionals to follow and evaluate this kind of stuff online and make strategic decisions about what to do about it, if anything. Savvy marketers are just taking advantage of a great opportunity to connect with their supporters, and in many cases, they should.

At the same time, I’d hate for some of the random creativity that’s displayed online via blogs, YouTube, Twitter, etc.  to be shoe horned into always  having to have some kind of profit/promotion  motive, or risk being shut down.

My questions for 2010:

• Can entertainment companies connect with fans through user-generated content without exploiting their labor?
• Will fans be able to show their love/support for a product/artist/performer through user generated content without violating copyright as a default?

If you don’t know the artists (Faith No More & Kylie Minogue) and musical genres (J-pop & hallyu) mentioned in the title of this post, that doesn’t make you odd. You just aren’t aware of these music more popular outside of the U.S. (and the “hallyu wave” is not limited to music).

But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have fans — they have many! The U.S. music audience often doesn’t get to hear the music popular elsewhere, yet American music is popular worldwide.

As Frederick Stiehl in his article about J-pop/Hallyu artist BoA,

America has known few foreign artists outside of Latin America or Britain. Indeed, America has proven itself to be quite resistant to foreign singers, and especially to non-English artists. A few exceptions include Icelandic Bjork and German Rammstein …. However, both of these artists demonstrate a specialized style, known to but not followed by “mainstream” Americans.

So where does subgenre begin when it includes an international superstar like Kylie Minogue?

Though she hadn’t done a show in the U.S. since 1987, the above video from the Chicago show where Kylie Minogue performed impromptu a cappella and the enthusiastic audience knows all the words shows there is interest in seeing her perform here. According to an interview with Blackbook magazine, Kylie says

The fans in America aren’t great in number, but they’re great in spirit. And they’ve been so patient. I think I really shocked them when I said I was touring, because they’ve become accepting of the fact that it was never going to happen.

In a recent interview, Mike Patton, the lead singer in Faith No More (a U.S. band still highly popular in Europe), commented on how the band wasn’t going to do an extensive U.S. tour because of not receiving many offers to play.

In response, a friend said

“As you [see in the Kylie performance], CLEARLY the demand was there, the promoters just didn’t want to take the chance. … And now that the economy is bad, the promoters have an even better excuse not to book anyone [like Faith No More] who isn’t a “sure thing.”

And even if one is the real thing, a recent On the Media podcast discusses how the rules of concert and music promotion have changed over time.

Unbelievably, Utada (a Japanese-American pop artist, known best in the U.S. for her two theme songs for the video games, Kingdom Hearts), may be the first Japanese OR Korean pop artist to have a multi-city tour in the U.S. There are multiple reasons why this may be so — including the language barrier, and cultutral appropriation/ racialized ideas of music.

And over a year and a half ago, Jeff Yang’s article on the Wonder Girls started with the lede:

Powered by catchy grooves, an all-out marketing frenzy and a wildly addictive Internet dance craze, the teenage divas known as the Wonder Girls have become Korea’s biggest pop phenomenon. But can they make it big in America?

Yet they haven’t blown up here, despite opening for the Jonas Brothers (and a three date label-based tour). It is hard to understand why artists like BoA, Utada, the Wonder Girls, and Namie Amuro (the self-proclaimed queen of hip-pop, video below) haven’t get gained a foothold in the U.S. And then I remember Kylie!

And as Stiel states, BoA’s

initial fan base was also the group responsible for the sales of the album [in the U.S. But this] does ultimately point to the fact that Asian stars are becoming popular enough to hold concerts in the United States and draw such a crowd.

Artists from overseas aren’t quite trusted here — regardless of whether they have have 1,000 true fans (or in the case of Kylie, many more). Strange how major music companies manage to get American music everywhere, but aren’t able to get their overseas labelmates U.S. success.

Greg Kot’s Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music is a must-read for those interested in how economics combined with listener actions have led the traditional music industry to its present morass. And therefore, the subtitle should be: How the music industry decided short-term profits were more important than life-long fans.

While I prefer a more linear style, the book is written in chapters focusing mostly on one artist or group per chapter — which makes sense, considering this is a work of music journalism. I appreciate that Kot, a non-lawyer, explains the law and cases correctly (yet with the dismayed “this is really the law?!?” tone needed). And while not using the terminology of one thousand true fans, he explores what having dedicated fans means for bands now — versus under the old regime.

But there are some seriously odd moments while reading as a fan. I’m not really sure why when describing the backstory of Metallica, Dave is mentioned, but there is literally no mention of Kirk! (Or Cliff. Or Jason.) But I’m digressing…

I expect a certain degree of errors in any work, but please, dude, know your halos! Any NIN fan knows that Broken counts. Especially when writing about T.R.’s dealings with record companies.

I was lucky enough to score a guest invitation to the New Music Seminar thanks to social media goddess Leah Jones of Natiiv Arts and Media. Being a semi-professional fangirl/full – on professional social media person I was curious to go to this event, knowing the upheaval that the music industry is in the midst of, it’s very similar to what the news industry has gone through.

Similarly, the music industry didn’t seem to take notice – or action – in terms of acknowledging the power of the Internet and the impact of user’s online behavior (not just downloading, but fan activity/word of month) until it was too late.

Either way, the influence of the internet was all over the New Music Seminar, and it was interesting to see Wired editorKevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans theory from a couple of years ago refined and held up as a potential industry model by none other than Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Records. Over at TLF, we’ve been extolling the virtues of the 1000 True Fans theory for awhile now, so to see music execs really taking notice and talking seriously about the potential of these ideas for the music community at large was heartening.

Not to fangirl over SXSW again, but I still can’t help but think the discussions being had at NMS were still a couple of years behind what was going on at SXSW this past spring. Just the fact that the discussion still seem to focus on the dying breed of “pop stars” the Kanye Wests, Green Days and Lady GaGa’s of the industry rather than on genre and niche-oriented artists said a lot to me about how where the music community is and isn’t. (Stop trying to make mega stars! Haven’t ya’ll read The Long Tail?)

Interestingly, in the middle of all of the discussion and debate, I spent a good chunk of my day on Twitter eagerly waiting for information on a limited vinyl release from a metal band with about less than 700 followers on Twitter, proving the point of panelists Ariel Hyatt and Corey Denis completely.

Still, there were great indications that the industry gets it, for most part. MC Chris and Mountain Goats both got shout – outs, which was a nice change from there usual NIN/Radiohead talk. (Can’t believe that I of all people said that.) Generally, a lot of the enthusiasm and embrace of entrepreneurship and innovation that I see lacking at a lot of the news-oriented conference I go to, I saw here. People see opportunities in the music industry, which is awesome – and makes me want to join them…

Once again, Joss Whedon’s latest television show, Dollhouse, like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly before it, was on the verge of cancellation. But not this time. Why? I think it is the recognition of the long tail of fandom.

According to the Washington Post’s TV blog:

Fox ordered a second season of “Dollhouse” which, some industry navel-gazers note, may be the lowest-rated series ever to get a renewal in the history of broadcast TV….

A case of the tail wagging the dog you say? … Not at all. Because, starting this season: Broadcast TV is the new tail.

This season it’s all about that “other stuff” that does so much to make a network’s parent-company happy.

Yes, some of the reason for the renewal has to do with symbiotic ownership — by owning both the show and the producing studio, more ad dollars can be kept in house. But the long tail of fandom is equally important.

So what is the impact of the long tail of fandom? In 2006, Henry Jenkins discussed fandom’s long tail about Joss Whedon’s previous series/movie Firefly/Serenity.

if we follow the logic of the Long Tail, success on one end of the tail depends on deep commitments from a relatively narrow fan base (that’s what Firefly had) and on the other end, on superficial commitments from a broader range of viewers (and that’s what Snakes on a Plane has.) I doubt anyone really has the same level of passion for Snakes as they have for Firefly. It’s a fun lark — a one night stand, a vacation movie romance. But it isn’t a once in a lifetime passion.

Joss Whedon now has built up a highly successful fandom base. Jenkins states that

Serenity had one of the most committed fan bases in media history and they would have followed Whedon anywhere …

Creating and sustaining new fanbases these days is becoming increasingly difficult. Since Jenkins wrote his post three years ago, there has been an increasing drop in television audiences, new ways that people are using their free time (such as Facebook & Twitter), and the video game industry is picking up much of the remainder.

The huge returns for two movies based in the long-standing fandoms of X-Men and Star Trek, show the ways that the long tail of truly dedicated fandom can still pay out for corporate owners over time. And considering Whedon’s long highly successful fandom track record, it likely makes financial sense to keep a show where fans will always buy the merch even if the overall ratings are bad.

Full disclosure: For me as a viewer, I have experienced Whedon’s work as an example of another type of long tail — diminishing returns!, liking each next thing he does less than the ones before.