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Blog: Creators

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, audio and social.

The creator investor: a compelling alternative to the creator product line

Hannah Walker

17 Sep 2026

Business Strategy Product Strategy Creators

The most successful creators are not just creative storytellers – they’re commercially minded entrepreneurs. The most sophisticated operators in this field recognise that launching their own product lines can be a lucrative and reliable revenue stream.

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Meta agrees to new user protections that will shape the course of the social marketplace

Hanna Kahlert

9 Sep 2026

Cultural trends YouTube TikTok

Meta has settled a landmark court case in the US over the negative impacts of social media on teens and adolescents. Without admitting culpability, the outcome is that they will owe an $18 billion agreed payment over 10 years, and develop and implement a host of new protective measures for younger u...

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Why music is not enough for an artist fan club

Kriss Thakrar

31 Jul 2026

Cultural trends Instagram Deezer

With 90,000 AI-generated tracks uploaded to Deezer every day(at time of writing), AI-generated music now constitutes the majority of new releases on the platform. Music was an oversaturated world before AI, with 60,000 tracks released a day in 2021, but a threefold increase in five years makes that ...

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The other side of the UGC coin: fans as part of the creative process

Hanna Kahlert

29 Jul 2026

Cultural trends YouTube Fandom

Algorithmic personalisation and niche scenes have seemingly undermined mainstream culture . Labels struggle to break new superstars and Hollywood productions have fallen into a repetitive cycle of remakes and franchises.

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Niche is the new mainstream: Marketing in an AI-saturated social landscape

Hanna Kahlert

22 Jul 2026

TikTok Instagram Social media

Social feeds are saturated with content – both original and AI-powered. In this competitive attention landscape, brand activations and traditional advertising are struggling to cut through. Simply getting a brand name out in the market is no longer enough to build loyalty.

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The future of the music creator economy

Mark Mulligan

9 Jul 2026

Audience Insight Streaming Creators

AI is a black swan event for music, intertwining the futures of the creator economy and the music industry. The number of gen AI music monthly active users (MAUs) nearly tripled between 2023 and 2025, adding nearly nine times as many users as the global base of musicians over the same period.

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Social media first principles: What it takes to go beyond the algorithm

Hanna Kahlert

8 Jul 2026

Business Strategy Social media Creators

The formula for success on social platforms changes regularly, much to the frustration of emerging creators and marketers alike. This is a natural consequence of content saturation. The moment the code gets cracked and everyone follows the same rulebook, that rulebook stops delivering anything that ...

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Now’s the time to have your say: Audio creator survey still open

Laura Fisher

1 Jul 2026

Audience Insight Creators Audio creators

The response to MIDiA's audio creator survey has been brilliant, so thank you to everyone who has already taken part. But, if you haven't yet, there's still time to have your say. Following a successful first year, we're back and once again inviting spoken-word audio creators to share their experien...

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Why now is the time for the creator right

Mark Mulligan

26 Jun 2026

Business Strategy Creators Artists

YouTube’s Lyor Cohen and the Recording Academy’s Harvey Mason Jr. recently penned an op-ed for Variety in which they made the case for the NO FAKES act being seen as the starting pistol rather than the finish line.

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Understanding the significance of a play: What the AMP’s new measurement framework means for the audio industry

Laura Fisher

25 Jun 2026

Clients only

Audience Insight Spotify Creators

Podcasting has spent much of the last decade trying to prove its value through metrics inherited from a fundamentally different era of digital media. That era may finally be coming to an end. On 4 June, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP), an industry task force established to address g...

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Video creation has never been easier – so why does it feel harder? Share your experience in our survey

Ben Woods

24 Jun 2026

Audience Insight Creators Creator economy

There has never been a better time to make video. The barriers to creation have collapsed. Editing software that once cost thousands is available on subscription. AI can generate transcripts, captions, thumbnails, clips, and even entire video sequences.

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Social versus sponsorship: brand building in 2026

Hanna Kahlert

17 Jun 2026

Marketing Strategy Fandom Social media

Social media is the go-to form of marketing in the digital age, resulting in a predicted combined $737.1 billion in annual revenue by 2031 per MIDiA’s forecast . It’s not hard to see why: social offers quick returns and easy measurement, including reach, time spent, click-through rates, and purc...

Calling all audio creators: Take our survey and help shape the future of spoken-word audio

Laura Fisher

11 Jun 2026

Audience Insight Creators Audio

After a successful first year , MIDiA's audio creator survey is back. We are once again inviting spoken-word audio creators to share their experiences and help build a better understanding of this rapidly growing creator segment.

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The renewed value of maximalism in the era of AI

Laura Fisher

3 Jun 2026

Product Strategy Creators Entertainment

The infrastructure of entertainment consumption has never felt more feudalistic. Distribution, discovery, and monetisation increasingly operate through a small number of platforms that shape how audiences find, consume, and pay for content.

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From answers to influence: How AI is reshaping social platforms’ role in search

Ben Woods

5 May 2026

Clients only

Business Strategy Creators Content

AI is not only disrupting search engines but dismantling the way people search across the internet. MIDiA’s Q3 2025 consumer survey reveals that 52% of those who reported using generative AI leveraged these tools to find information.

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How the creator economy is changing traditional entertainment's discovery, distribution, and supply

Ben Woods

15 Apr 2026

Business Strategy Streaming Creators

The creator economy used to be an adjacent entertainment ecosystem to traditional entertainment. Those days are numbered – if not over already. Creators are now a foundational component in how traditional entertainment produces and distributes content at scale.

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From feeds to events: How content creators are reshaping TV strategy

Ben Woods

1 Apr 2026

Business Strategy Creators Content Creators

The playbooks for streaming TV services and creators are collapsing into one – but even so, misconceptions remain. Large parts of the traditional entertainment industry consider the engagement techniques in two lanes.

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Attention versus fandom: Why entertainment needs a new framework for understanding engagement

Ben Woods

11 Mar 2026

Fandom Creators Video

The attention economy has become the de facto framework for measuring loyalty in the entertainment industry. However, not all attention is equal. While an hour spent scrolling videos on TikTok may compete with an hour spent playing a £70 video game, the depth, value and quality of that engagement a...

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What history really tells us about AI’s potential

Mark Mulligan

5 Mar 2026

Cultural trends Creators Innovation

History is being used to argue both for and against AI, with citations of previous cultural events and practices as evidence. Unfortunately, however, most of the historical references used are just plain wrong.

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The Sidemen formula: Why TV formats belong on creator channels

Ben Woods

25 Feb 2026

Business Strategy Streaming Creators

Broadcasters and streamers keep asking how to work more closely with creators. Their standard approach is to commission a creator-led show, cast them in a film, or license their back catalogue for a streaming service.

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