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.

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
Audio
Business Strategy
Audiobooks
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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Marketers, don't miss out on GTA 6

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Rhys Elliott
gta
grand theft auto
brands
Grand Theft Auto VI ( GTA 6 ) is due to launch in autumn 2026. It will be one of the century's biggest entertainment launches, and its impact will ripple through culture for years to come. Remember how every brand jumped on the Barbie movie hype train with an everything-pink activation? GTA 6 is about to usher in a similar opportunity –– a bigger one that will last far beyond a single summer.
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The video creator economy’s challenge: not all creators want to pay for editing tools

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Ben Woods
Video creator tools
editing
Adobe Premiere Pro
Video creation has never been more accessible. More and more entertainment consumers are shifting from passive to lean-through consumption by creating their own content. However, those creators have different priorities from professional editors and videographers who have made up the video creator economy for decades.
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The rise of the songwriter ‘brand’

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Tatiana Cirisano
songwriters
Music publishing
Social media
If you have been drawn into the particular orbit of pop music that includes Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter, you probably know a thing or two about Dan Nigro. Fans have been joining the dots between Nigro and this cluster of emergent pop artists on social media — not only discovering his credits on hits like Chappell’s “Good Luck, Babe!” and Rodrigo’s “Vampire”, but also clocking that he is in the studio with Reneé Rapp and followed Carpenter on Instagram .
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MIDiA launches video creator economy vertical as AI delivers transformative growth

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Ben Woods
Social video
Video
Business Strategy
Keeping step with AI’s impact on the video creation industry can be a daunting prospect. Ways of working that have existed for decades are being reorientated around generative AI tools. With these changes comes opportunities, risks and plenty of questions: AI is poised to open the gates to more entry-level creators, but to how many? And how will well-established creators – and the wider value chain – adapt to a new tool kit that majors on speed and productivity? Demystifying AI’s impact has been a key focus for MIDiA Research in recent months.
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