MIDiA Blog

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Why Drake’s ‘Which One’ single is not a TikTok-first track

Cover image for Why Drake’s ‘Which One’ single is not a TikTok-first track

Hanna Kahlert

29 Jul 2025

Drake’s new single ‘Which One’, featuring Central Cee dropped on July 25, 2025 –not abnormal. Less normal: he launched it with no warning halfway through a 41-minute episode of Iceman , a YouTube series he is streaming in advance of his album of the same name.

5 min read

Online game ownership in the digital age – do we really own what we play?

Cover image for Online game ownership in the digital age – do we really own what we play?

Brandon Sutton

24 Jul 2025

Product Strategy

Over the past decade, digital sales have become the primary way gamers purchase video games. With this shift comes a series of growing pains that often puts gamers at odds with publishers. One particularly contentious issue is digital ownership and consumer rights; topics gaining renewed attention t...

4 min read

The music business is splitting in two. Here’s why songwriters are reinventing their role

Cover image for The music business is splitting in two. Here’s why songwriters are reinventing their role

Tatiana Cirisano

24 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

When systems fail, there are two options: try to fix what is broken, or build something new. In our ’s landmark ‘bifurcation theory’ report , MIDiA pinpointed a new class of music creators taking the latter path.

4 min read

Why legacy media should use creators as curators and content providers

Cover image for Why legacy media should use creators as curators and content providers

Ben Woods

23 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

Much of the traditional entertainment world is now working with creators. In fact, many of these companies have long-standing creator strategies when it comes to marketing. Whether it is a movie launch, a new TV series, video game, or album release, these businesses have a strong handle on which cre...

4 min read

Why the AI boom will boost non-Western markets

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Hanna Kahlert

22 Jul 2025

Cultural trends

AI is now intertwined with all the internet has to offer – be it generated memes, AI music, or (somewhat) helpful chatbots. Seemingly, no proposition can go free of generative embellishment. Yet as Gen AI proliferates, something is becoming increasingly clear: content written with AI assistance of...

4 min read

What to do when the medium loses meaning

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Laura Fisher

17 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

We are living through a peculiar moment in media evolution, where the traditional categories used to organising content – TV, radio, podcast, film – are collapsing under their own weight. Not because they are obsolete, but because they do not reflect how audiences are consuming media.

4 min read

YouTube, AI, and the social content balancing act

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Ben Woods

16 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

How are social platforms coping as the AI floodgates open? For some time now, MIDiA has been advocating for social platforms to provide some protections to human creators from the increase in AI content.

5 min read

Building fandom is about the journey, not the destination

Cover image for Building fandom is about the journey, not the destination

Hanna Kahlert

15 Jul 2025

“Superfans” remain the headline topic for the entertainment industries , in music and beyond. They are the biggest cheerleaders amongst their peers, the most engaged on social media and streaming, and the highest spenders across the board.

5 min read

Why podcasts triumph in real-life settings: a lesson in scene alignment

Cover image for Why podcasts triumph in real-life settings: a lesson in scene alignment

Laura Fisher

10 Jul 2025

Podcasts are well and truly getting the in-real-life treatment. What began as a digitally native on-demand medium is now commanding physical spaces with remarkable success. This isn’t from the live recordings in and of themselves, but from mastering scene alignment .

3 min read

Why fandom’s ‘more is more’ era could backfire

Cover image for Why fandom’s ‘more is more’ era could backfire

Olivia Jones

9 Jul 2025

Marketing Strategy

‘Less is more’ has long been a pillar of entertainment marketing strategy, promoting the importance of quality over quantity. However, in the past decade, the new phrase has effectively become “more is more” as all forms of entertainment push to release as much content as possible, as often ...

5 min read

YouTubers want greater government support – and British broadcasters could help

Cover image for YouTubers want greater government support – and British broadcasters could help

Ben Woods

8 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

Creator economy

Governments often struggle to keep pace with technological change. This can be frustrating for young but growing industries that need ministerial support to unlock the next stages of their economic potential.

4 min read

The rise of video podcasts: people-watching reimagined or a necessary evolution?

Cover image for The rise of video podcasts: people-watching reimagined or a necessary evolution?

Laura Fisher

2 Jul 2025

Cultural trends

Human nature and human nosiness seem to go hand in hand. There is something undeniably compelling about getting a view into someone else’s world. Historically, this would be in the form of a coy walk past a living-room window’s undrawn curtains in the street.

4 min read

MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music forecasts | Recalibration

Cover image for MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music forecasts | Recalibration

Mark Mulligan

1 Jul 2025

Business Strategy

We are pleased to announce the release of MIDiA’s annual music forecasts report. This is always a labour of love and takes a bit longer than some other entities’ forecasts as our approach is more Etsy than Amazon, with every single line of data (and there are thousands of them) being hand crafte...

4 min read

Streaming is both retail and radio – it shouldn’t be

Cover image for Streaming is both retail and radio – it shouldn’t be

Mark Mulligan

26 Jun 2025

Business Strategy

In a brutally simplified view of the past, the recorded music industry had two lanes: retail and radio. Piracy killed retail. Streaming killed piracy, then went on to, if not kill, then seriously maim radio.

5 min read

Apple, Stormzy, and the new Hollywood

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Ben Woods

25 Jun 2025

Business Strategy

How do broadcasters and traditional filmmakers adapt to a YouTube world? It is a question that has hung over the video industry’s old guard for some time now. Yet, social video is nothing new; YouTube is 20 years old, and the creator economy is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

6 min read

Budweiser’s royalty loophole ad: How AI and social have changed the value of creators

Cover image for Budweiser’s royalty loophole ad: How AI and social have changed the value of creators

Hanna Kahlert

24 Jun 2025

Cultural trends

generative AI music

Advertising is a critical component of the entertainment industries. It supports free tiers of video streaming, forms the backbone of social platform revenues, and contributes significantly to the music industry through sync, licensing, and ad-supported streaming.

4 min read

The ghost of the 2000s lingers over the catalogue acquisition market

Cover image for The ghost of the 2000s lingers over the catalogue acquisition market

Kriss Thakrar

23 Jun 2025

Product Strategy

music catalogue

Sign up here for MIDiA’s Masterclass webinar on catalogue investment, this Thursday June 26, 2025, with Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano. In the second quarter of 2025, a range of catalogue acquisition deals have broken the typical mould: Sony acquired Hipgnosis Songs Group from Recognition Musi...

5 min read

Ads in WhatsApp Stories: is this the next ad frontier in social?

Cover image for Ads in WhatsApp Stories: is this the next ad frontier in social?

Hanna Kahlert

20 Jun 2025

Business Strategy

Meta has announced that it will be rolling out ads in WhatsApp’s ‘updates’ tab. This marks a move to monetise what has, up until now, been a platform with not so impressive revenue to report. A major issue for WhatsApp is that, as a direct messaging platform, it has been very difficult to mone...

4 min read

Why 'Global South' is a limiting label for the music industry

Cover image for Why 'Global South' is a limiting label for the music industry

Laura Fisher

20 Jun 2025

Business Strategy

At MIDiA, we have started critically reassessing the use of the term‘ Global South’ , a phrase entrenched in industry and geopolitical discourse but increasingly unfit for purpose in today’s complex entertainment landscape.

4 min read

The ‘pure’ songwriter is disappearing – and it’s everyone’s problem

Cover image for The ‘pure’ songwriter is disappearing – and it’s everyone’s problem

Tatiana Cirisano

19 Jun 2025

The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) annual meeting is known for making headlines. At last year’s event, CEO David Israelite used his state-of-the-union speech to announce a formal complaint against Spotify’s audiobook bundling, lodged with the Federal Trade Commission.

5 min read

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