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.

Two-tier licensing is about to become a reality

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Mark Mulligan
Streaming
Spotify
Streaming Royalties
With the dust still far from settled on the UMG / Deezer streaming royalty proposal, something even bigger is coming: Spotify is turning the concept into reality in Q1 2024. The behind-the-scenes conversations have been ongoing for some time, but the details were stated publicly on panels at last week’s ADE conference, meaning that the information is now firmly in the public domain.
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How Taylor Swift has ushered in an era of direct distribution for media fusion

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Tim Mulligan
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Concert Film
amc theatres
Cinematic releases of music concerts are nothing new, with the likes of the Beatles Help! film of 1965 ushering in a new era of mass participation for global fanbases beyond the concert arena. When Covid shut down the live music scene in 2020-2021, there was a brief flurry of interest in delivering virtual concerts for fans seeking a proxy for the live experience that went on hiatus.
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Spotify versus Apple Podcasts: The podcast analytics race has begun

Cover image for Spotify versus Apple Podcasts: The podcast analytics race has begun
Annie Langston
Spotify
Podcasts
Creators
First announced at Podcast Movement in August 2023, Spotify is now rolling out new features and analytics tools to aid podcast discovery. While Apple Podcast’s recent updates target a specific type of creator — creators with subscriptions (and therefore, established audiences) — Spotify is casting a wider creator net and focusing on empowering lesser-known creators to customise their pages.
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Are the ongoing layoffs in games indicative of a wider issue in the games industry?

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Karol Severin
Games industry
games forecast
Games
The layoffs wildfire that struck the games industry at the start of 2023 does not seem to be stopping - the most recent being Epic Games last week. Firstly, on a personal level, it has been really sad and upsetting to see all these people being laid off in 2023 – especially when the reasons behind these layoffs are really not through any fault of their own.
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How AI can empower creators by cutting through content saturation

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Ben Woods
Social video
YouTube
AI
When YouTube’s chief executive Neal Mohan recently revealed a suite of AI tools to support creators, he aimed to drastically reduce the time it takes to produce content. Among those innovations were AI-driven topic suggestions for videos; AI generated photo and video backgrounds for short-form content; AI support for selecting copyright-free music; simplified video editing and an AI-powered dubbing tool to help creators expand beyond their core markets.
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Does culture become a commodity, or do commodities become culture?

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Hanna Kahlert
commodity
culture
Cultural trends
More than three fourths of audiences believe that the music they listen to reflects who they are. This rises to more than four fifths of people aged 25-44. Music listening is also incredibly personal –roughly a third of people listen to playlists they curate themselves when exercising, hanging out with friends, working or studying, or just when they are out and about.
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