Blog: fandom insight

We are no stranger to TikTok and its impact on the music industry, which is changing the structure of the business one viral video at a time. Artists and composers are flocking to the innovative social media app with hopes of finding musical success, similar to that of 24KGoldn and Nathan Evans.

The Chinese authorities’ crackdown on fandom represents the first major growing pain for the global fandom economy. Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) will likely be the bellwether of this shift, with two thirds of its revenues coming from non-music (i.

Three months ago, MIDiA reported on the role of the Boombox in Roblox and the potential of the unique (and unlicensed) behaviour that was emerging around it. Subsequently, the National Music Publishers Association has filed a $200 million lawsuit against the platform, directly citing the copyright infringement facilitated by the in-game product.

2021 will be a pivotal year for games and OTT services. The long-term behavioural impact on consumers who have spent a year glued to screens for all aspects of their lives – work, social, communication and entertainment – is still unfolding and point to a regression in the current positive sentiment around digital.

Building on the discussions from Day 1, Day 2 looks at opportunities in cross-entertainment partnerships and in-game spending. In-game spending increased in 2020 as gaming’s cultural importance grew to become an ideal destination for young consumers to define and express their digital personas during a time of limited social interaction, highlighting the commercial opportunity for games companies to serve the image and sense of belonging needs of consumers via virtual goods and services in games environments and beyond.

In the digital era, anything can generate metrics – to the point where no matter how good the numbers look, actual success can sometimes be unconnected. Logged ‘views’ of an advertisement don’t hold up to scrutiny when 29% of consumers “normally stop paying attention” when ads come on during a TV show, 31% “usually skip video ads online” and 11% block online ads on their desktop and/or laptop (source: MIDiA Research Main Consumer Survey Q1 2019).

Q3 2019 was a quarter of mixed fortunes for Spotify, with its subscriber base displaying consistent growth, podcasts making a solid early showing, emerging markets demonstrating promise but ad revenue falling short.

One would think that, in a highly competitive market where every entertainment proposition is now increasingly struggling to maintain engaged audience share, the ideal strategy would not be to obliterate one of your most popular ( 250 million players globally ) games with an asteroid strike.

Join us on Wednesday 17 th July in central London for MIDiA’s next free-to-attend event: Monetising Fandom in a Fragmented Content Landscape. Regular attendees of our events will know that they combine great new data and analysis with insightful panels and a mix of attendees not quite like at any other event, with representation from across multiple industries.