Blog: Amazon

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.

Bootlegging is the scourge of many industries. Could it be music’s greatest strength?

Cover image for Bootlegging is the scourge of many industries. Could it be music’s greatest strength?

Tatiana Cirisano

7 Feb 2025

The word “bootleg” has long left a bad taste in brands’ mouths. Quite literally defined as “illicit goods,” these unauthorised versions or replications of clothes, handbags, concert tees, and other items have long plagued brands.

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Will audio have a seat at the creator economy table?

Cover image for Will audio have a seat at the creator economy table?

Rutger Rosenborg

18 Dec 2024

As 2024 comes to a close, it is worth reflecting on this year’s audio trends and where we expect things to head in 2025. Per our recent report, ‘ MIDiA’s 2025 predictions: It’s social’s stage now ’, social platforms will continue to take centre stage on the heels of the creator economy reshaping entertainment in the first half of the 2020s.

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Bundle up: Audible audiobooks join the Amazon Music catalogue

Cover image for Bundle up: Audible audiobooks join the Amazon Music catalogue

Rutger Rosenborg

4 Dec 2024

As audio platforms continue to expand into industries beyond audio, new fronts in the platform wars are emerging. With Spotify now competing with YouTube for video, podcast, and music supremacy, the company’s foray into audiobooks has placed it in direct competition with Audible and, by extension, Amazon.

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As Big Tech courts everyone, niche platforms must understand podcast purists

Cover image for As Big Tech courts everyone, niche platforms must understand podcast purists

Rutger Rosenborg

10 Sep 2024

As boundaries fall, borders blur, and digital goods and services are increasingly decoupled from per-unit value, the mass consumer will turn to low-friction applications that do everything and offer everything.

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The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

Cover image for The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

Rutger Rosenborg

7 Aug 2024

Cultural trends

In March, on the heels of a Danish man becoming the first person convicted of streaming fraud, MIDiA explained how AI could soon enable a golden age of audio piracy . Coupled with the fact that book publishers have been reporting that AI-generated books are being published under their names or oddly similar ones on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, there are big implications for audiobooks.

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What Audible’s new royalty model means for its audiobook battle with Spotify

Cover image for What Audible’s new royalty model means for its audiobook battle with Spotify

Rutger Rosenborg

1 Aug 2024

Business Strategy

In early July, Audible’s blog broke the news that the company was introducing a new royalty model for audiobooks. Previously, according to Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman , Audible would do a “buyout”, paying a publisher an upfront fee to have their book on the service rather than distributing royalties according to titles or hours listened.

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Why Netflix is likely to follow Amazon down the mainstream subscriber ad route

Cover image for Why Netflix is likely to follow Amazon down the mainstream subscriber ad route

Tim Mulligan

25 Jun 2024

Netflix’s shift towards ads was underpinned by a strategic assumption that it could justifiably command ad rates at nearly twice the market average. However, two years of its Basic with Ads service has proved that advertising is a much tougher business to succeed in for an SVOD service than the business fundamentals would suggest.

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Netflix, the NFL, and the Amazon effect

Cover image for Netflix, the NFL, and the Amazon effect

Tim Mulligan

21 May 2024

sports streaming

After two decades of saying no to becoming a live sports streamer, Netflix has finally relented and has agreed to pay the NFL to show two NFL games on Christmas daythis year. The three year deal also includes options for other holiday games to be livestreamed in 2025 and 2026.

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Amazon opens the IP tap for its Audible to Prime Video pipeline — your move, Apple

Cover image for Amazon opens the IP tap for its Audible to Prime Video pipeline — your move, Apple

Rutger Rosenborg

2 May 2024

subscription video on demand

Streaming video

Marvel proved that spinning out intellectual property (IP) from comic books to movie franchises could be incredibly lucrative. With the growth of video games, this transmedia strategy has expanded to streaming video on demand (SVOD) with successes like The Last of Us on HBO Max and, most recently, Fallout on Amazon Prime Video.

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Fallout is another transmedia hit, but the strategy needs to evolve

Cover image for Fallout is another transmedia hit, but the strategy needs to evolve

Rhys Elliott

26 Apr 2024

Everyone was talking about the Super Mario Bros. Movie (The Mario movie ) and HBO’s The Last of Us this time last year, and now Fallout has entered the mainstream thanks to the Amazon show. But, for game publishers, the transmedia strategy is nowhere near maximising its potential.

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What podcast slowdown? 1.2 billion people will be listening by 2030

Cover image for What podcast slowdown? 1.2 billion people will be listening by 2030

Rutger Rosenborg

11 Apr 2024

spotify podcasts

Is podcasting slowing or growing? Both, as it turns out. With marketing and advertising budget cuts contributing to layoffs and cancellations at major podcasting players like Spotify and NPR, 2023 was an uncertain time for the podcast industry.

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Format versus context: Can a YouTuber make it on TV?

Cover image for Format versus context: Can a YouTuber make it on TV?

Hanna Kahlert

1 Feb 2024

Media and Marketing

Cultural trends

YouTube star MrBeast is making recent headlines for his video upload experiment with X , and now a potential partnership with Amazon Prime Video for a new reality series. The competition to turn the popular YouTuber into an audience draw for other platforms is on –but can a star in one place, still be a star anywhere else? This would not be the first time an entertainment company has tried to convert a popular social media figure.

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Who will be the winners in video as the walled gardens of entertainment recede?

Cover image for Who will be the winners in video as the walled gardens of entertainment recede?

Ben Woods

21 Dec 2023

Protectionist measures that kept the streaming wars alive are being wound back. Licenced content is back in vogue, despite streaming TV being built on exclusive shows. Competitive tensions are cooling as entertainment looks to bundle services to combat the cost-of-living crisis, and super aggregators are making it easier for consumers to switch between streaming services like linear TV channels.

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Why Amazon’s road to the Bond millions is part of a bigger plan

Cover image for Why Amazon’s road to the Bond millions is part of a bigger plan

Tim Mulligan

28 Nov 2023

007: Road to a Million

Earlier this month, Amazon released 007: Road to a Million onto Amazon Prime Video (Prime) – its subscription video on demand (SVOD) service. As the biggest investment into an unscripted reality show since The Grand Tour , it represents Amazon’s first serious attempt to exploit the James Bond IP since its acquisition of MGM in March 2022.

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Why Amazon is deploying the Medici factor in its crucial UK market

Cover image for Why Amazon is deploying the Medici factor in its crucial UK market

Tim Mulligan

22 Jun 2023

Today Amazon announcedits impact upon the creative landscape of the UK, a territory both similar and uniquely different from its US domestic market. The headline number estimated by Capital Economics is £4.

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Amazon bringing physical product shopping into games is a prime example of monetising fandom

Cover image for Amazon bringing physical product shopping into games is a prime example of monetising fandom

Karol Severin

12 May 2023

in-game monetisation

Earlier this week, Amazon announced an initiative called Amazon Anywhere . It enables mobile games to offer consumers the ability to purchase physical products (e.g., toys and merchandise) directly inside the game.

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Amazon Prime Video’s spy drama Citadel forges a new frontier in product placement

Cover image for Amazon Prime Video’s spy drama Citadel forges a new frontier in product placement

Ben Woods

9 May 2023

Product placement has a long history helping film and TV producers maximise the monetisation of their content. The use of products by Hollywood stars to promote brands dates backs to the 1920s when Red Crown Gasoline’s logo featured in The Garage starring comedy actors Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton.

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As Spotify joins the live audio shutdown, can Amp and Spaces get it right?

Cover image for As Spotify joins the live audio shutdown, can Amp and Spaces get it right?

Annie Langston

12 Apr 2023

On the heels of cancelling several live audio shows, Spotify is now entirely shutting down its live audio app Spotify Live . Spotify was one of many major platforms to invest in live audio after Clubhouse kickstarted the craze during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is not the only company now struggling to resuscitate the format.

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The future lies beyond tech – a long(er) read

Cover image for The future lies beyond tech – a long(er) read

Hanna Kahlert

14 Dec 2022

As entertainment companies start planning their next big steps for the coming year, the success and failure of their strategic decisions will hinge on one big, and perhaps surprising, existential question : is this it for the tech industry? Planning for 2023 seems to mean planning for disruption, and this is no easy thing to do – especially given the changes already wrought by the last three years of predominately virtual working.

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How podcast platforms are setting their sights on global expansion

Cover image for How podcast platforms are setting their sights on global expansion

Annie Langston

5 Oct 2022

The growth of podcast audiences requires a global effort. And while the market is primarily dominated by mostly Western platforms, such as Spotify and Apple, there are opportunities for new players to compete in the digital audio market by tapping into international audiences.

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