Peer to peer systems have properties that are very similar to those of broadcasting. Very often, the availability of content is strongly related to its popularity. For this reason, P2P is good for the distribution of the head of the long tail.
Here is an interesting paper that presents a methodology to maintain the availability of long tail content on P2P systems:
We describe an efficient incentive mechanism for P2P systems that gen- erates a wide diversity of content offerings while responding adaptively to customer demand. Files are served and paid for through a parimutuel market similar to that commonly used for betting in horse races. An analysis of the performance of such a system shows that there exists an equilibrium with a long tail in the distribution of content offerings, which guarantees the real time provision of any content regardless of its popu- larity.
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