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.

Global independent label survey

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Mark Mulligan
MIDiA Research is conducting a major study of independent label revenue in order to create a definitive review of the independent sector’s contribution to the global music market. MIDiA conducted this work for a number of years on behalf of the Worldwide Independent Network and is now independently creating a dataset for 2020.
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Discovery enters streaming race with discovery+ and Olympics offering

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Alistair Taylor
Last week , Discovery announced it will launch discovery+, ‘the definitive non-fiction’ subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD), on January 4th, 2021. Consumers in the US can expect the largest-ever content library for a new streaming service from launch, with more than 55,000 episodes from Discovery’s iconic brands such as the BBC’s Natural History collection, A&E Networks, Group Nine and more.
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Pandemic boom fuels creator tools growth

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Dara Jegede
- A new generation of artists is engendering a new creative paradigm, where production is far more central to the creative process and artists are able to make and release high-quality music more quickly than ever - SAAS-based creator tools are becoming the new ‘top of funnel’ for the music industry, establishing meaningful relationships with creators before they even release LONDON—November 30, 2020: A fast-growing wave of creator tools companies are meeting the needs of a new generation of artists with innovative and intuitive music production solutions.
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Time to move beyond the song economy

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Mark Mulligan
The UK parliament is currently running an inquiry into the streaming music economy, having called for evidence from across the music business. Earlier this week were the first verbal submissions, from a number of UK artists including Tom Gray (Gomez), Guy Garvey (Elbow), Ed O’Brien (Radiohead) and Nadine Shah.
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Social media propositions are competing by homogenising?

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Hanna Kahlert
‘Tis the season for new social media layouts, it seems. Recently, Instagram has introduced a new layout featuring a combined Reels/Stories tab and a shopping tab; Twitter has rolled out its own form of stories, called “Fleets” (get it? Because they’re fleeting?) and Snapchat has, directly in the wake of its Voisey acquisition , launched TikTok-esque Spotlight , sponsored by creators.
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Why TikTok’s regulatory countdown has been extended yet again

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Tim Mulligan
One of the many knock-on effects of this month’s US Presidential election has been the temporary reprieve granted to social video app TikTok. The app is owned and operated by ByteDance, the Beijing-based Chinese tech company which has been propelled into the ranks of the leading tech majors following the global breakout success of its super-short-form video service which reached the milestone of two billion app downloads last month.
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Virtual Reality: The flying cars of the 21st century

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Hanna Kahlert
Virtual reality – or “VR” – has been described as a potentially media transforming technology for years now . Desperate trend seekers have long harked its “potential”, certain that this little-understood, sci-fi-esque innovation will feature heavily in our digital futures (although, as MIDiA identified back in 2016 , VR’s mainstream adoption was always going to be heavily dependent upon content investment to match the hardware spend).
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