Blog - Page 75

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.

Keeping with the times: Sports plays catch-up with younger digital audiences

Alistair Taylor

27 Jan 2020

Media NFL Strategy

Sports as a product is feeling the squeeze of the peak attention economy. Sports fans in the traditional sense are ageing, and appealing to a younger digitally-native audience is a fundamental issue that rights holders can no longer ignore.

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Peacock goes for gold

Alistair Taylor

23 Jan 2020

live sports Media Peacock

On the January 16, Comcast (owner of NBCUniversal) unveiled further details of its direct to consumer (D2C) proposition, Peacock. Peacock is set to debut on April 15, exclusively for Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex customers, before being rolled out nationally across the US on July 15th.

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Peacock gets ready to ruffle some D2C feathers

Tim Mulligan

22 Jan 2020

Comcast nbc NBCUniversal

On January 16th, US communications behemoth Comcast (owner of NBCUniversal) held an investors day to provide much-needed clarity around its forthcoming direct-to-consumer (D2C) service Peacock. Of the big four D2C services due to launch in a 12-month period between H2 2019 and H2 2020, Peacock is th...

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Amazon Music: From Dark Horse to Thoroughbred

Mark Mulligan

22 Jan 2020

Amazon Music amazon music unlimited Amazon Prime Music

Neatly ahead of Spotify’s Q4 earnings, Amazon has taken the rare step of announcing subscriber metrics for Amazon Music (inclusive of Prime Music and Music Unlimited). Amazon Music closed 2019 with 55 million ‘customers’ across free and paid.

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YouTube and the fan monetisation model

Hanna Kahlert

21 Jan 2020

Fan monetisation fanbase Fandom

How to describe YouTube? The now-15-year old video platform does not fit into a single box, but rather ticks all of them. Its positioning between consumer and business is a fascinating one, replicated in reach and capacity by no other platform.

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The challenge for Global D2C growth in 2020

Tim Mulligan

17 Jan 2020

d2c Disney HBO Max

2020 promises to be a big year for direct-to-consumer (D2C) services, with Warner Media’s HBO Max and Comcast’s Peacock set to join Apple TV+ and Disney+ in the battle to win streaming audience share both in the US and beyond.

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Just What Is a Podcast, Anyway?

Mark Mulligan

17 Jan 2020

Audio audio strategy Media

The podcast market – as with all media – is going through dramatic change, stretching the very meaning of what podcasts even are. To understand this fast-changing market, it is important to think outside of the constraints of traditional lenses as they can obscure the bigger picture.

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Why the song economy is just getting started

Keith Jopling

16 Jan 2020

Marketing Strategy Music

When Journey’s song Don’t Stop Believin’ was originally released as the second single from the album Escape in 1981, it was a modest US chart hit (Billboard Hot 100 no. 9). Fast forward 28 years, in 2009 the track had two very prominent syncs: The Sopranos finale and Glee (the song featured in...

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MIDiA’s podcast research – A response

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2020

Media midia podcast data midia podcast tracker

Last week we published a blog post highlighting some initial findings from our inaugural quarterly podcast tracking data . The results show Spotify in a leading position as a standalone platform, Apple Podcasts second and national broadcaster apps doing well.

Spotify illustrates the difference between flat engagement and real sentiment

Hanna Kahlert

14 Jan 2020

consumer engagement engagement metrics Fandom

Q3 2019 was a quarter of mixed fortunes for Spotify, with its subscriber base displaying consistent growth, podcasts making a solid early showing, emerging markets demonstrating promise but ad revenue falling short.

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Spotify AND Apple lead Podcasts – it’s all down to how you measure it

Mark Mulligan

10 Jan 2020

Podcasts Spotify Apple

The podcast platform data from MIDiA’s Q4 tracker is in. These are the high-level findings (you can read more about our methodology here ): Apple still leads overall: A recent report showed that Spotify has become the leading podcast platform in the US.

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The meta trends that will shape the 2020s

Mark Mulligan

10 Jan 2020

2020 predictions attention saturation Marketing

CES, the big annual consumer tech show, is underway in Las Vegas. Unlike in most previous years, there has been little in the way of big new announcements. This is in large part because we are reaching a degree of maturity in the consumer landscape, with big new developments being replaced by smalle...

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‘If you ain’t first, you’re last’: Revenue-over-reach argument not refuted for F1

Alistair Taylor

9 Jan 2020

BARB Champions League F1

2019 audience figures for Formula One (F1) provide the latest example of a rights holder opting for short-term revenue optimisation over long-term strategic growth, to the detriment of its viewing audience.

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Netflix bewitches the internet

Tim Mulligan

9 Jan 2020

fanbases fantasy Game of Thrones

Netflix, the current subscription video on demand (SVOD) global leader, has topped Wikipedia searches for the second week of 2020 with its new fantasy scripted drama original, The Witcher . The show is based upon a story universe created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, which originated in novel ...

The tech major ecosystem wars are here with aggressive, loss-led on-boarding

Hanna Kahlert

7 Jan 2020

Innovation Marketing Media

Soon we will probably all have home speakers, whether we like them or not. They are starting to appear almost out of the ether, much like the classic double-sized Sports Direct mugs everyone had in their student flats but no one remembered ever acquiring.

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Can BT lay the smackdown on its rivals?

Alistair Taylor

3 Jan 2020

BT BT Sport consumption

This Saturday at 1am GMT BT will debut its live broadcast for WWE Smackdown, having acquired the exclusive rights from long-term UK broadcaster Sky in June 2019 (via X ). This signalled the end of Sky’s tenure as the home of WWE content, which first began broadcasting wrestling coverage to fans ba...

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Ellie Goulding and Billie Eilish are streaming’s new normal

Mark Mulligan

3 Jan 2020

Billie Eilish Ellie Goulding Streaming

Less than a week into the new decade and we already have the first indications that the streaming rulebook continues to be rewritten faster than the ink can dry on its last entry. Three separate articles, on the surface unrelated, when stitched together create the outline of a new streaming narrativ...

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Enter the Dragon: Netflix steps closer to borderless content with Korea’s CJ ENM

Tim Mulligan

2 Jan 2020

CJ ENM Netflix Strategy

Netflix has quietly announced a new strategic partnership with potentially far-reaching ramifications for how it weathers the direct-to-consumer (D2C) storm of 2020. The December 30th press release officially announced the production and output deal agreed on November 21st2019 between Netflix and St...

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If we are moving from an attention economy to a sentiment economy, is music still undervalued?

Zach Fuller

19 Dec 2019

music industry Music streaming post-peak attention

The recorded music market is currently worth $18.8 billion dollars a year, and thanks to streaming that number is growing. However, this number represents only the captured value of recorded music. Music sells tickets, clothes (although Urban Outfitters as a vinyl retailer might argue it is the othe...

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Amazon one – family Christmas nil

Alistair Taylor

18 Dec 2019

Amazon Amazon Prime Sports

Ever since the English Premier League (EPL) awarded rights to tech major Amazon in June 2018, the excitement for December 2019 and how Amazon’s live stream delivery would pan out has been palpable. The EPL has long prioritised revenue over reach when entertaining rights bids, but this legacy appro...

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