Blog: echo

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.

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

Cover image for The future lies beyond tech – a long(er) read
Hanna Kahlert
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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Ellie Goulding and Billie Eilish Are Streaming’s New Normal

Cover image for Ellie Goulding and Billie Eilish Are Streaming’s New Normal
Mark Mulligan
Less than a week into the new decade and we already have the first indications that the streaming rulebook continues to be rewritten faster than the ink can dry on its last entry. Three separate articles, on the surface unrelated, when stitched together create the outline of a new streaming narrative that while firmly rooted in recent developments represents an entirely new chapter for the music industry: Ellie Goulding’s ‘River’ was the UK Christmas number one despite being an Amazon exclusive Jimmy Iovine claims Drake and Billie Eilish each have more streams than the entirety of the 1980s UK streaming revenue growth slowed, adding £191 million in 2019 compared to £210 million in 2019 Fusing consumption and retail Streaming’s impact is both commercial and cultural, in large part because it fuses what used to be retail and radio.
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Have We Reached Peak Tech?

Cover image for Have We Reached Peak Tech?
Mark Mulligan
In last week’s Take Five I highlighted a Vox story which reported that over the last year the number of companies using terms like ‘tech’ or technology’ in their documents is down 12%. This is an early indicator of a much more fundamental concept – we may have already reached peak in the tech sector, the business sector that has driven the fourth industrial revolution.
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Walled Gardens: How Does Amazon and Google’s Approach Compare to Apple’s?

Zach Fuller
Having begun to embed itself within popular consciousness throughout 2017, voice control is poised to extend its influence and usher in the latest hardware paradigm shift in tech. What is important to consider is that in these early days of the technology, the charge is being led by two companies with a far less decorated history of delivering hardware: Amazon and Google.
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Announcing MIDiA’s State Of The Streaming Nation 2 Report

Cover image for Announcing MIDiA’s State Of The Streaming Nation 2 Report
Mark Mulligan
2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metrics while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially.
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Why the Voice Control Landscape Will Be So Competitive

Cover image for Why the Voice Control Landscape Will Be So Competitive
Zach Fuller
Withthe success of Prime and the Echo, Amazon at present is experiencing the same halo effect that graced Microsoft in the 90s and Apple in the 00s. Withtheir finger on the pulse of everything from entertainment (Manchester by-the-sea, American Gods) to drones, there appears to be a consensus that save for anti-trust legislation, Amazon will become the first $1 Trillion market cap company.
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Quick Take: Amazon Music Unlimited Comes To The UK

Mark Mulligan
Amazon announced the anticipated launch of Amazon Music Unlimited in the UK today. For my full take on Amazon Music Unlimited see my previous post here. Make no mistake, Amazon are taking this launch seriously, with a coordinated PR campaign and press release quotes not only from Amazon’s head of streaming music Steve Boom but also from Jeff Bezos himself.
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Has Snapchat Learned From Twitter’s IPO?

Zach Fuller
Snap Inc, the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, have hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for a seemingly imminent IPO. In addition to being one of the first app generation unicorns (alongside Spotify and Uber) to go public, the company is doing so at a time when fellow social media giant Twitter is in the process of selling itself, having seemingly been stalled by acquisition discussions with Disney, Google and Salesforce.
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