I'm not sure how Chris Anderson's piece got published without (what I consider) a crucial aspect of the abundance economy: the profit of the producer. Sure, consumers get access to rare b-sides and companies like Netflix and Spotify (Rhapsody is a little dated) make tons in revenue off of their non-hit portfolio content, but how does the producer of the content do? Well, it depends. As the Wall Street Journal reported last year, the rights holder to a Spotify song is paid between $.0006 and $.00084 for every paid song.
If you're Lorde, Drake or someone who is going to generate a lot of plays, you will make out great from having your content on Spotify, but if you're one of those independent "non hits" Chris Anderson talks about, you're basically screwed. This point has gotten in to the zeitgeist recently as Taylor Swift (who made $6 million on Spotify this year for her catalogue) took her music off the streaming site.
I know I harp on the fact that consumers are now producers, but I think that it is interesting in the last few years they have begun to adopt a similar model to companies like Netflix and YouTube. If you look at YouTube stars they are posting content at an insanely fast rate, generating a large portfolio of content that will collect revenues for the foreseeable future. But in addition to money, they are collecting Likes which has become an important currency in the abundance/attention economy. This is the focus of a Frontline documentary from earlier this year, Generation Like, which I highly recommend everyone in the class watch.
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