Conclusion

from this study I have found that many niche bands are marketing themselves in similar ways to mainstream bands using sites such as my space, however their music isn't as widely available as the mainstream artists. I believe that the long tail theory is correct as many factors from my research has displayed it.

Niche Genre - Pop Punk

when I searched for pop punk on a online search engine wikipedia brought up a list of pop punk bands and about.com brought up a list of the top ten pop punk albums. However I could not find any bands that are specifically dedicated to the genre or online directories. Pop punk has become popular in the past few years and I found that the more mainstream artists were available on download sites such as Itunes however the many niche bands that populate this genre had limited supplies of artists. I searched the genre on amazon and found 66,287 mp3 downloads and 17,379 music Cd's. I then searched the genre on ukrecordstore and found that it brought up albums and singles with either word in the title, none of which were albums of the genre. When you search on facebook and myspace "pop punk" it shows you bands which have put pop punk in their name and as a genre. An example of a Major pop punk band is the Mainstream study I have done on this case as few artists in the pop punk genre become major, they are usually brought to the attention of a mainstream audience.