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Blog: Podcasts

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, audio and social.

The Audio Academy Festival 2026: Where community and audio combine

Laura Fisher

2 Oct 2026

Podcasts Radio Discovery

Last year I attended the Radio Academy Festival, and while I was there, the organisation announced it would become the Audio Academy. Returning to the first festival under the new name felt significant.

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Podcasting success: Inside Goalhanger’s The Rest is Fest

Laura Fisher

18 Sep 2026

Fandom Cultural trends Podcasts

MIDiA Research has previously documented the phenomena that is live podcasting. We’re all aware a podcast can fill an auditorium. What hasn’t yet been tested is where the pull comes from (the format, the host, or the producer?) because until now, most live podcast events have tested only one for...

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Beyond the briefing room: What Andy Burnham's How to Fail booking tells platforms about podcast fragmentation

Laura Fisher

11 Aug 2026

Clients only

Marketing Strategy Podcasts Engagement

UK podcast listening is remarkably fragmented by taste: sport, comedy, true crime, news – and that fragmentation is precisely the opportunity. There isn't just one podcast audience to court ; there are several, each with its own tone, trust dynamics, and level of political engagement.

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What it takes to make a music streaming subscriber switch services

Tatiana Cirisano

30 Jul 2026

Clients only

Business Strategy Spotify Streaming

For years, choosing a music streaming service was perhaps less of a decision than an accident. At least in Western markets, the major DSPs have offered similar catalogue, feature sets, and user interfaces, giving consumers little reason to choose one over another.

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Understanding the significance of a play: What the AMP’s new measurement framework means for the audio industry

Laura Fisher

25 Jun 2026

Clients only

Audience Insight Spotify Creators

Podcasting has spent much of the last decade trying to prove its value through metrics inherited from a fundamentally different era of digital media. That era may finally be coming to an end. On 4 June, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP), an industry task force established to address g...

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The Podcast Show 2026: The signals worth paying attention to

Laura Fisher

29 May 2026

Podcasts Entertainment Media

The Podcast Show 2026 reflected an industry entering a more mature and commercially sophisticated phase. While previous years of often focused on podcasting proving its value within entertainment and media , this year’s conversations centred far more on sustainability, audience growth, and long-te...

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Social media doesn’t feel social anymore – so where does online community go from here?

Laura Fisher

21 Apr 2026

Cultural trends Social media Podcasts

A curious divergence is emerging in the UK's media habits. Earlier this month, Ofcom published its latest report on adults' media use, and one finding stands out. Social media usage remains high, with 89% of UK adults using at least one platform daily.

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Podcasting’s next growth frontier: tackling the unconverted

Laura Fisher

14 Apr 2026

Business Strategy Podcasts consumer

A lot of attention is being paid to the “rules of engagement” for podcasting: format preferences, video versus audio, and platform battles like YouTube versus Spotify. The industry is deeply focused on how and where audiences are consuming podcasts, and rightly so.

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From quip to category: What the Golden Globes signifies for podcasting's future

Laura Fisher

17 Feb 2026

Cultural trends Podcasts Entertainment

There was a time, not so very long ago, when mentioning you worked in podcasting required a somewhat defensive preamble about what podcasting actually is. There is a TikTok trend circulating that goes something like this: if you cannot explain your job to a five-year-old or your grandmother, it does...

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The audio drama renaissance: The curious case of Sherlock & Co.

Laura Fisher

14 Nov 2025

Product Strategy Podcasts Entertainment

The audio drama, a format once consigned to history, is enjoying a remarkable revival. At its epicentre is a compelling case study in modern audience engagement: Goalhanger’s Sherlock & Co . a narrative podcast now approaching one million monthly downloads.

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Beyond listening: What podcast libraries can tell us about consumer identity

Laura Fisher

22 Oct 2025

Audience Insight Podcasts Consumer behaviour

Podcast libraries have evolved beyond a simple log of listening habits, becoming a telling indicator of personal identity. Increasingly, the most revealing source of who someone is may not be their social media feed or viewing history, but the podcasts they choose to follow.

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Forget catalogue; creators are the new valuable IP

Hanna Kahlert

16 Oct 2025

Business Strategy Streaming Fandom

The value of entertainment catalogue and content has shifted over the last decade. Licensing usage and distribution used to underpin the system, but challenges arose as digital consumption became the default.

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The power of audio: Reflections on the Radio Academy Festival

Laura Fisher

24 Sep 2025

Business Strategy Podcasts Radio

On September 17, 2025, I had the pleasure of attending the Radio Academy Festival: World of Sound. Held in the splendid Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, it felt apt to discuss the future of sound in such a hallowed hall of learning.

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The late-night dilemma: Balancing tradition and disruption

Laura Fisher

31 Jul 2025

Business Strategy Video Podcasts

Two competing opinions landed in my inbox recently, both signalling a shift in late-night entertainment, but from entirely different perspectives. The first, from RainNews , argued that podcasts were replacing traditional late-night TV.

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Why podcasts triumph in real-life settings: a lesson in scene alignment

Laura Fisher

10 Jul 2025

Fandom Podcasts Audio

Podcasts are well and truly getting the in-real-life treatment. What began as a digitally native on-demand medium is now commanding physical spaces with remarkable success. This isn’t from the live recordings in and of themselves, but from mastering scene alignment .

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The rise of video podcasts: people-watching reimagined or a necessary evolution?

Laura Fisher

2 Jul 2025

Cultural trends Podcasts Video podcasts

Human nature and human nosiness seem to go hand in hand. There is something undeniably compelling about getting a view into someone else’s world. Historically, this would be in the form of a coy walk past a living-room window’s undrawn curtains in the street.

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The evolving podcast landscape: Key insights from The Podcast Show 2025

Laura Fisher

29 May 2025

Business Strategy Podcasts Audio

The 2025 Podcast Show revealed an industry in a stage of transformative growth. From the series of excellent talks, several key trends emerged, from legacy media, audio platforms, and creators adapting to new consumption patterns.

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The ARIA Awards 2025: Why can’t we all just get along?

Laura Fisher

20 May 2025

Cultural trends Audio Podcasts

As someone with both a professional and personal obsession with all things audio, since the ceremony on the 14th of May, my LinkedIn feed has been unsurprisingly saturated with content about the ARIAs.

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The soft power of podcasting: how long-form audio is reshaping discourse

Laura Fisher

14 May 2025

Marketing Strategy Podcasts Audio

In an era where attention spans are dwindling and media fragmentation is at an all-time high, podcasting has emerged as an unlikely but formidable force in shaping geopolitical narratives. Unlike traditional news radio or adversarial TV interviews, podcasts offer a unique blend of intimacy, depth, a...

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A case against video podcasting

Laura Fisher

16 Apr 2025

Product Strategy Podcasts Radio

Key takeaways from this blog: While video is at the forefront of entertainment, audio-only formats can be equally important for engagement Prioritising video-first podcasting risks dilution – favouring style, celebrity, and algorithms over knowledge and authenticity MIDiA argue that audio-only pod...

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