Blog: Media and Marketing

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.

Is this the post-social era? The state of the social platform user in 2024

Cover image for Is this the post-social era? The state of the social platform user in 2024

Hanna Kahlert

16 Jul 2024

Daily Active users

The social marketplace is mature, with available consumer time having peaked and new growth for platforms coming at others’ expense. New platforms are emerging but remain small, while the biggest platforms, like Facebook, are seeing losses to their overall share of daily active user penetration compared to 2020.

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The make-or-break of live in 2024

Cover image for The make-or-break of live in 2024

Hanna Kahlert

9 Jul 2024

The music industry has a culture problem. An overabundance of data –– from streaming services and social platforms alike ––has fostered a dependence on digital performance that does not reliably translate into fandom and cultural value.

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From X to Instagram, the line between social video and podcasts is blurring

Cover image for From X to Instagram, the line between social video and podcasts is blurring

Rutger Rosenborg

3 Jul 2024

As the podcast industry wakes up to the fact that video podcasts are growing –– and fast –– MIDiA’s 2024-2030 podcast forecasts confirm the source of much of that growth: YouTube. YouTube video market share is already the largest among all platforms where podcasts are available, having shot up from 9.

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Who asked for AI? Why its future is more boring than you think

Cover image for Who asked for AI? Why its future is more boring than you think

Hanna Kahlert

2 Jul 2024

Henry Ford famously once said, “ If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse” . This quote is often trotted out by ‘innovators’ when defending a new piece of technology; consumers do not know that they want it, because they don’t have it yet.

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Commodification’s kickbacks: trends emerging in the pendulum swing back from content overload and AI

Cover image for Commodification’s kickbacks: trends emerging in the pendulum swing back from content overload and AI

Hanna Kahlert

18 Jun 2024

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the state of entertainment (and culture more broadly). AI generated content is taking up ever-larger swathes of the internet. Passive consumption drives high numbers that don’t translate into value, and remuneration for music creators is low while profits at labels are up.

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Another Fake Drake? AI is decoupling artists and their voices (and there’s no coming back)

Cover image for Another Fake Drake? AI is decoupling artists and their voices (and there’s no coming back)

Hanna Kahlert

12 Jun 2024

heart on my sleeve

Drake has had perhaps one of the most publicly up-and-down relationships with generative AI. There was the AI Drake music generator, which he was dead set against. Then there was ‘Heart on My Sleeve’, the AI-generated mix using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd by a creator known as ghostwriter, where Drake again expressed displeasure at the use of his voice.

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The state of the attention economy: why don’t fan-first platforms work?

Cover image for The state of the attention economy: why don’t fan-first platforms work?

Hanna Kahlert

5 Jun 2024

The music industry is increasingly looking to fan-first solutions to drive its next era of growth (and solve artists’ financial woes), with all eyes towards the Taylor Swift model of fan frenzy. At the heart of this quest is a tension inherent in the ‘everything everywhere all the time’ model.

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Songs as cultural moments (and why TikTok trends are so appealing)

Cover image for Songs as cultural moments (and why TikTok trends are so appealing)

Hanna Kahlert

31 May 2024

The music industry is racing in two different directions at once. On the one side is the push for more music to be made by more people for less money – underpinning the $500 million valuation of Suno , the generative AI music platform.

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Social companies face a fragmenting digital ecosystem

Cover image for Social companies face a fragmenting digital ecosystem

Hanna Kahlert

24 May 2024

On the surface, it is a year of opportunity for social platforms. TikTok may face a ban in the US, opening market share for Reels, Shorts, and any other platform with social video features to sweep in and snap up any remaining free consumer time.

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Chasing the zeitgeist: why speed trumps creativity in social video marketing

Cover image for Chasing the zeitgeist: why speed trumps creativity in social video marketing

Ben Woods

16 May 2024

TikTok has redefined what it means to be part of a cultural moment. In the past, engaging with trends meant being a consumer of content that captured the spirit of the time. For video, this was largely expressed through watercooler moments, where discussing the most popular TV shows and movies with friends, family, and colleagues was a symbol of one’s cultural capital.

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Audience agency and the value of social media: the rise of the “digitine”

Cover image for Audience agency and the value of social media: the rise of the “digitine”

Hanna Kahlert

15 May 2024

“Let them eat cake,” declared model and influencer Haley Kalil , dressed for the $75,000-per-ticket Met Gala in an unironically Marie Antoinette-style dress, in a viral TikTok video last weekend. Somehow, this did not go down very well among audiences on social media, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of whom are currently struggling to remain encamped in University campuses or taking to the streets in protest worldwide.

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Cutting through the clutter: why an analogue revival is inevitable

Cover image for Cutting through the clutter: why an analogue revival is inevitable

Hanna Kahlert

9 May 2024

The jury is very much still out on generative AI and its copyright obligations. Yet the Pandora’s box of AI-generated content has already been opened, and there is no going back. For a world which has become almost entirely reliant on digital content– be it song mp3s or job applications – the implications are widespread and the challenge is simply one of volume.

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Music fandom’s future (and its existential crisis)

Cover image for Music fandom’s future (and its existential crisis)

Hanna Kahlert

1 May 2024

The launch of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department”, broke records last week (small surprise there). Swift’s reputation for playing to her fanbase has once again proven to be in a class of its own – be it changing the fortunes of cinema chains , or altering local economies with her tour.

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AI cannot replace creators… and the proof, surprisingly, is books

Cover image for AI cannot replace creators… and the proof, surprisingly, is books

Hanna Kahlert

17 Apr 2024

Creator economy

The asset-class-ification of entertainment has tended to reduce art to content made only to ensnare views, which lends itself to generative AI uptake. However, in a digital economy increasingly looking towards fandom for solutions, this environment has not exactly fostered the development of ideas, stories, and art worth being a fan of .

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The cultural pendulum swing is coming back around

Cover image for The cultural pendulum swing is coming back around

Tatiana Cirisano

11 Apr 2024

Music streaming

Across culture, there is an eerie sense of things coming full circle. After spending the past decade building an industry around ad-free streaming TV, Netflix has ads and feels increasingly like cable .

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The techification of entertainment (and why it needs to reverse)

Cover image for The techification of entertainment (and why it needs to reverse)

Hanna Kahlert

10 Apr 2024

Entertainment today is almost inseparable from streaming – for better and for worse. The tech infrastructure that underpins today’s entertainment industry has had a huge impact not only on how content is delivered, but who consumes it, how, and why.

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Forget TikTok trends; the scene is TikTok itself

Cover image for Forget TikTok trends; the scene is TikTok itself

Hanna Kahlert

4 Apr 2024

Much of marketing today focuses on chasing the latest TikTok trend. Catching the ‘next big thing’ just as it is taking off, then watching the cultural clout dissolve as the trend disappears as quickly as it appeared, is an exhausting enterprise.

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Reddit’s IPO is a nail in the coffin for the centralised internet

Cover image for Reddit’s IPO is a nail in the coffin for the centralised internet

Hanna Kahlert

28 Mar 2024

centralised internet

Last week, Reddit, the 19 year old social(ish) platform and long-time backbone of the internet, went up for IPO. The news is not exactly a surprise; the company has been hinting at it for years now, and initially filed in 2021 before the market turned unfavourable.

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Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change

Cover image for Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change

Hanna Kahlert

20 Mar 2024

It has never been easier to become a music artist, but it has never been harder to turn that into a long-term career. A hyper-saturated content environment means record levels of competition and decreasing shares of stable revenues.

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What would a post-TikTok (US) future look like?

Cover image for What would a post-TikTok (US) future look like?

Hanna Kahlert

14 Mar 2024

The US House of Representatives has just passed a bill, with bipartisan support, which would make TikTok break with parent company Bytedance or be banned from app stores. Based on current discourse, it looks unlikely that TikTok will comply; and unlike past legislation, it looks like this bill may have ‘ teeth ’.

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