The AI race is a tense one. Billions of dollars have been poured into the likes of OpenAI. Meanwhile, the US and UK governments, among others, have pledged to invest heavily in AI development, suggesting that they feel it is of critical importance to “win” the new space race.

As we said in our games trends to watch article , 2025 will be the year of the portable. Nintendo kicked that off in earnest, finally lifting the curtain on its Switch 2 console. Here are the basics: The Switch 2 seems iterative – a bigger, better Switch with some quality-of-life improvements It is coming out in 2025 It plays Switch 1 games too, both physical and digital Nintendo will announce its software lineup on April 2, 2025 It will hold several in-person events across North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia to build fandom and let fans go hands-on Our clients and the press have been sending us plenty of questions, so we decided to answer the most frequently asked here.

Note: Following the publication of this piece, Spotify released a statement regarding Pelly's article, which is reproduced in full at the bottom of this page. In this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine , Liz Pelly published “ The Ghosts in the Machine ”.

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

As TikTok grappled with its blackout on Sunday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took the opportunity to up the ante with one of his biggest rivals. Targeting TikTok’s 170 million US users, Mosseri revealed Edits: a new creator tools app is designed to support not only Instagram creators but those creating short form videos on other platforms too.

The TikTok ban saga continues. The official date of the ban saw the app go dark in the US and Canada, replaced by a notice that the law had come into effect. However, only a few hours later, the app came back online, with a new notice that thanks to the Trump administration’s willingness to work on a deal, it would remain available to US consumers (for now).

As the global podcast industry zeros in on video – especially social video – one overlooked discovery source has never really gone away: word of mouth. Despite a format that was born to be digital, podcasting still relies on the most analog of recommendation systems for discovery in the US, UK, and France.

Diminishing returns on console generations, cash-strapped consumers, and increasing console prices might just open up a new pricing model for consoles – one in which consoles look increasingly like smartphones.

Most will be familiar with the adage: ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. Despite being a cliché, the saying lives on as it cuts to the heart of how individuals and companies perceive value.

Since its inception, Spotify has been, and continues to be, the streaming music market’s lightning rod. This is due to its continued ability to maintain leading market share and the fact it is the only leading global DSP that is independent and therefore has to focus place more focus on commercial sustainability than peers owned by global tech superpowers.

Whether the result of eschatological anxiety caused by shifting global political alignments or the decline in humanities students in academic institutions, the business of history – especially in audio – is booming.

The news cycle leaves no room to draw breath as strategic pivots and Supreme Court hearings come thick and fast. Changes are afoot – and they paint a very different picture of the digital landscape of the future.

Amid a flurry of year-end lists released last month, TikTok published a ranking of the platform’s most popular songs. While US music executives have been busy considering how a potential TikTok ban could impact their artists in the new year, the number one track on TikTok in 2024 was not by an American act at all.

New year, new research! We capped off 2024 by asking a representative sample of gamers [n=6,300] how they feel about developers using generative AI to make games (and how it affects purchasing decisions).

It is easy to forget that the audiobook is not a new format. Novels, stories, and poems – much of what the modern world knows best through the written word – all have their origins in the oral traditions of the ancient world.

YouTube’s grip on TV viewership in the West is tightening, reflecting the growing power of the creator economy. Nielsen data from July 2024 shows that YouTube now has the highest TV audience share on US smart TVs,10% versus Netflix’s 8.

A swath of elections in 2024 have paved the way for regulatory changes in the social media sphere, with talk of bans and restrictions meeting the governmental meddling of CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Today’s music landscape is one defined by abundance and immediacy. In today’s chronically-online world, everything is over-ground, immediately. Scenes have to work really hard to be underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or marketing person is going to see the buzz and try to bottle its essence for wider consumption.