Blog: Cultural trends - Page 4

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.

AI copyright lawsuits beg the bigger question: How valuable is digital content?

Cover image for AI copyright lawsuits beg the bigger question: How valuable is digital content?

Hanna Kahlert

10 Nov 2023

The future of artificial intelligence (AI) is currently caught between earth-shaking promise on one side, and a tangle of ongoing litigation on the other. This week’s OpenAI keynote painted an exciting future for generative AI, with updates including customisation and integration capabilities for ChatGPT.

min read

Does culture become a commodity, or do commodities become culture?

Cover image for Does culture become a commodity, or do commodities become culture?

Hanna Kahlert

5 Oct 2023

Cultural trends

More than three fourths of audiences believe that the music they listen to reflects who they are. This rises to more than four fifths of people aged 25-44. Music listening is also incredibly personal –roughly a third of people listen to playlists they curate themselves when exercising, hanging out with friends, working or studying, or just when they are out and about.

min read

The future of AI will orient around datasets… which will put the user in a front-and-centre blind spot

Cover image for The future of AI will orient around datasets… which will put the user in a front-and-centre blind spot

Hanna Kahlert

6 Sep 2023

The rise of generative AI has thrown the future of creators (of all industries) into question, with copyright being the key to how it all plays out. Models like ChatGPT have an input-output ‘black-box’ problem, which means that whatever goes into training the models cannot be traced to what comes out.

min read

AI, music rights, and known unknowns

Cover image for AI, music rights, and known unknowns

Mark Mulligan

31 Aug 2023

artificial intelligence

The music industry is approaching a tipping point, with the building blocks of what will be the post-streaming era beginning to fall into place.The streaming era will make way for something new. Innovation, disruption, and change will define the coming years, with AI, fandom, and the creator economy centre stage.

min read

Up close and personal: when the algorithm goes too far

Cover image for Up close and personal: when the algorithm goes too far

Tatiana Cirisano

24 Aug 2023

artificial intelligence

Today’s entertainment world is characterised by hyper-personalisation. Everyone has a unique TikTok feed tailored specifically to their own niches. DSP playlists have names like “For You” and “Made For [username]”.

min read

AI is the new digital ad industry… but the stakes are far greater

Cover image for AI is the new digital ad industry… but the stakes are far greater

Hanna Kahlert

9 Aug 2023

Zoom has been making the news this week over its controversial new terms and conditions that now allow the service (in theory) to utilise user data to train its AI-assisted features. While the company has reassured the public that they need to opt into the usage, which is necessary to use its AI functions like generating transcripts, privacy concerns are still high.

min read

Barbenheimer, the Hollywood strikes, and AI: Is film at a cultural turning point?

Cover image for Barbenheimer, the Hollywood strikes, and AI: Is film at a cultural turning point?

Hanna Kahlert

20 Jul 2023

After an exciting boom period in film and TV productions made for digital-first streaming platforms, the downsides seem to be catching up. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2nd (2023), signalling the biggest disruption to TV and film production since Covid-19.

min read

Less is more, but it’s already all ‘too much’: The rise of digital disengagement

Cover image for Less is more, but it’s already all ‘too much’: The rise of digital disengagement

Hanna Kahlert

5 Jul 2023

A new Europol report has predicted that as much as 90% of all content on the internet could be ‘synthetically generated’ (made or modified by AI) by 2026. That is a two-and-a-half-year window and closing, with the end result being only a small minority of online content having been conceived of, much less created by, actual humans.

min read

The music industry’s tipping point is Right Here, Right Now

Cover image for The music industry’s tipping point is Right Here, Right Now

Mark Mulligan

29 Jun 2023

virtual artists

streaming remuneration

Streaming is buckling under its own weight. The economics and structure that served it well in its first decade are not the ones that will get it through the next ten years. You might say that streaming is going through its ‘start up to scale up’ phase.

min read

Social platforms are going niche: the end of copycat features

Cover image for Social platforms are going niche: the end of copycat features

Hanna Kahlert

28 Jun 2023

It has long been a recurring strategy for social platforms to borrow one another’s successful features – to the benefit of the incumbents, and the difficulty of new players trying to break through.

min read

The tap water music industry needs to become a bottled one

Cover image for The tap water music industry needs to become a bottled one

Kriss Thakrar

20 Jun 2023

Music streaming

Creator economy

Music and water are often compared to each other in the streaming age. There are many ways to express this analogy, but the bottom line is that music is becoming commoditised. To clarify, commoditisation is the erosion of a product from one that is highly differentiated and highly priced (with high margins) into one that isn’t.

min read

Are we approaching the age of digital disengagement?

Cover image for Are we approaching the age of digital disengagement?

Hanna Kahlert

1 Jun 2023

Media and Marketing

Cultural trends

Digital entertainment, despite its mild correction from the lockdown-boom period, is still at record levels of engagement. More content is being created than ever before, more efficiently and cost-effectively, across games, music, and video.

min read

AI will unlock creation rather than consumption

Cover image for AI will unlock creation rather than consumption

Mark Mulligan

25 May 2023

artificial intelligence

Unlike most new technology hype cycles, the impact of AI on the world is already surpassing expectations. The current hype around AI far exceeds that of more recent tech, such as VR, NFTs, and 3D printing.

min read

The new need for scarcity, and why the next big leap in entertainment has not happened yet

Cover image for The new need for scarcity, and why the next big leap in entertainment has not happened yet

Hanna Kahlert

11 May 2023

AI has dominated discourse in the entertainment industry and beyond for most of this year. As a tool it poses opportunities for some and threats for others. As a dynamic shift it will usher in a content boom that will make the previous few years of streaming dilution and attention saturation seem small by comparison.

min read

Embrace, enhance or hinder: What will AI do for you, the creator?

Cover image for Embrace, enhance or hinder: What will AI do for you, the creator?

Kriss Thakrar

3 May 2023

Creator economy

There has been an abundance of coverage and conversation around AI, and it is unlikely to fade away any time soon. There is a question of how AI will change the music industry and broader creator economy.

min read

Why AI generation might be just what music needs

Cover image for Why AI generation might be just what music needs

Tatiana Cirisano

25 Apr 2023

artificial intelligence

Music streaming

In her hit ‘Saoko’, Rosalía celebrates her multi-dimensionality, singing (translated from Spanish): “I contradict myself, I transform / I’m everything, I transform”. As artists navigate the world of AI-generated music, her words might become a mantra.

min read

Solving the problems of AI require defining what it is… and these lines are tricky to draw

Cover image for Solving the problems of AI require defining what it is… and these lines are tricky to draw

Hanna Kahlert

20 Apr 2023

Media and Marketing

Universal Music Group has released a statement asking streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music to stop allowing AI’s to train on their datasets, and to remove AI music (largely in the wake of the viral AI-generated hit ‘Heart On My Sleeve’, made in the style of The Weeknd and Drake).

min read

AI will transform music; the question is how?

Cover image for AI will transform music; the question is how?

Mark Mulligan

18 Apr 2023

Artifical Intelligence

Every new technology goes through a period of being overhyped before the dust settles, and that technology either fades or builds steadily thereafter. Think 3D printing, VR, NFTs. In my 20+ years as a media and tech analyst, only three technologies have had a level of hype that felt like it was going to live up to expectations: 1) the internet (which was already in full swing by the time I started out – I’m not that old); 2) smartphones / apps; and 3) AI.

min read

The next AI battleground will be around datasets, not just functionality

Cover image for The next AI battleground will be around datasets, not just functionality

Hanna Kahlert

12 Apr 2023

The conversation about AI has permeated every level of every industry, from architecture to music to politics. What it is, what it can do, and what it should be allowed to do are all hot topics –and yet, the answers are perhaps more simplistic than might be expected from all the hype.

min read

Why TikTok and the future of social is now on trial

Cover image for Why TikTok and the future of social is now on trial

Hanna Kahlert

5 Apr 2023

The last two weeks have seen social platforms, especially TikTok, abuzz with clips of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s hearing before the US congress, answering lawmakers’ questions about the social media app’s data protections for users and its relationship with China.

min read

‹
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
›

Showing 61 to 80 of 208 results.