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.

What happens when the “relentless toll” of the music industry meets the creator economy in a cost-of-living crisis?

Cover image for What happens when the “relentless toll” of the music industry meets the creator economy in a cost-of-living crisis?
Hanna Kahlert
The music industry is in a cultural crisis. It is more demanding than ever to be a successful artist, with the work required to meet the demands of social algorithms and to cut through the clutter being more competitive than ever, in addition to touring being hit hugely by the pandemic lockdown and now by a cost-of-living crisis limiting fans’ ability to attend real-life concerts.
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Amazon touches down with a new streaming era for NFL… and a boost to Prime membership

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Tim Mulligan
On September 15th, Amazon Prime Video aired its first Thursday Night Football ( TNF ) match under its new $1 billion-per-year domestic broadcast rights deal. Amazon’s decision to become the exclusive broadcaster (via Prime Video and Twitch) has meant that all NFL fans outside of the local markets of the playing teams (which Amazon syndicates out to local broadcast-TV stations as part of the terms of the deal) must have a Prime subscription in order to watch the TNF games.
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Grand Theft IP

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Perry Gresham
This week gaming entered leak season, with large amounts of content unexpectedly released for two major upcoming titles: Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA) and Diablo IV. GTA developer Rockstar Games confirmed : “We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorised third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto”.
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YouTube's secret weapon for overtaking Spotify

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Tatiana Cirisano
YouTube has not been quiet about its ambitions to overtake Spotify as the music industry’s top revenue driver by 2025. The clock is ticking, and although YouTube is the most popular platform for music listening globally (55% of consumers watch music videos on YouTube, compared to 24% who listen to Spotify), it still has a significant way to go towards translating that dominance to revenue.
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The future of marketing and A&R is all about scenes

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Tatiana Cirisano
Today’s era of hyper-fragmentation raises all sorts of questions for the music industry, in particular marketing and A&R departments. In a landscape where it is harder than ever to have a mainstream impact, how do you drive culture? How do you break artists and build superstars? What will peak success for the next generation of artists even look like? The framework we need may have been here all along.
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Why Netflix is doubling down on strengthening its media fusion IP moat

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Tim Mulligan
It has been a difficult year for Netflix so far. 2022 has brought some home truths to a growth strategy that had become complacent in the wake of the streaming service’s Covid bounce, and where Netflix’s mainstream brand recognition allowed it to capitalise on the 12% increase in home entertainment time made available during lockdown.
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