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.

New Media's YouTube Strategy

Zach Fuller
New media’s video strategy came to the fore in the last year. With instant articles on Facebook and Google meaning Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox’s core platforms lost significant amounts of traffic, video became the key source of revenue, while native advertising and branded content articles lost their cachet with advertisers.
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Free Report: Digital Music Is Streaming Forward

Dara Jegede
MIDiA is proud to partner with DiMA on its inaugural Streaming Forward Report. Digital distribution, andstreaming in particular, has been transforming music business in recent years. Although digital business models had already transformed content marketplaces prior to the rise of streaming, it is the rise of streaming services that really flicked the switch on this radical transformation.
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Facebook Might Just Have Done YouTube a Massive Favour

Mark Mulligan
The word on the street is that the deals labels have struck with Facebook for its forthcoming music service have been done on a blanket license basis (i.e. a flat fee) with no reporting. This was reported by Music Business Worldwide and has been confirmed to me by various well-placed third parties: “One controversial element of these agreements is, we hear, that these are ‘blind’ checks: effectively, advances that are not tied to any kind of usage reports from Facebook.
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Marvel versus Netflix

Cover image for Marvel versus Netflix
Tim Mulligan
With yesterday’s launch of ESPN+ Disney has begun its direct-to-consumer strategy, which revolves around the introduction of proprietary subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. The move forms part of Disney’s stated aim to reach consumers directly, following on from the creation of a dedicated direct-to-consumer and international business unit last month.
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‘Nice for What?’ and the Slow Death of the Album

Zach Fuller
I write this week’s blog conflicted between the music fan who grew up on the album and the MIDiA analyst looking at the numbers (an eternal struggle). Alongside the feature-length film, the LP was one of the definitive artistic mediums to emerge in the 20th century, but it was also bound to the same business framework of many enterprises of the period; factory-powered mass production methods with the product demand side stoked by television and radio.
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Spotify D(PO)-Day

Mark Mulligan
Arguably the most anticipated day in the history of digital music is upon us. By the end of it we will have the first hint at whether Spotify is going to fall at the Snap Inc. or Facebook end of the spectrum of promising tech IPO, or DPO in the case of Spotify.
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Spotify and Netflix Are Experiencing Opposite User Engagement Trends

Cover image for Spotify and Netflix Are Experiencing Opposite User Engagement Trends
Karol Severin
The latest Fuse data enables us to comparemonthly hours per MAU spent onSpotify and monthly hours per subscriber spent on Netflix over 2017. Interestingly they are travelling in opposite directions. Spotify & Netflix's Monthly Hours Of Engagement per MAU/Subscriber While Spotify’s monthly content hours per MAU increased from 19 to 25 in 2017, Netflix’s average monthly hours per subscriber decreased from 50 to 39.
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Quick Take: Frustrate and Destroy – YouTube’s Frontloaded Strategy

Zach Fuller
Listen to any music streaming debate and it will not be long before you the value gap discussion regarding YouTube is brought up. It is a point MIDiA has discussed at length through distinguishing Spotify and YouTube’s business models (that of all streams created equal vs share of ad revenue), but YouTube Head of Music Lyor Cohen is looking to change that.
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