Blog: Strategy

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.

Beyond the obvious: Building future-focused strategy

Cover image for Beyond the obvious: Building future-focused strategy

Mark Mulligan

11 Oct 2024

Business Strategy

Business strategy has long been demarcated across sustaining and disruptive innovation. In the digital realm, the latter has had the upper hand, but now, as digital enters a slower growth phase, sustaining innovation is back in favour.

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TikTok may be shutting down its music service, but it will still compete with streaming

Cover image for TikTok may be shutting down its music service, but it will still compete with streaming

Hanna Kahlert

24 Sep 2024

TikTok has announced that it plans to shut down its music streaming service, TikTok Music, at the end of November (per Bloomberg ). The company has cautioned users that they should migrate all their playlists to other streaming platforms.

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More games will need to grow time spent in 2024 – what type of research can help do it?

Cover image for More games will need to grow time spent in 2024 – what type of research can help do it?

Karol Severin

18 Dec 2023

While the new year is usually a time for hope and new beginnings, 2024 may not necessarily be smoother sailing for the global games industry than 2023. Yes, companies have experienced reduced operational expenditure following thousands of layoffs and are not entering the new year with as much of a cost burden.

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Squid Game: The Challenge - successfully spinning new content from existing IP

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Tim Mulligan

5 Dec 2023

Squid Game: The Challenge

Tomorrow sees the release of the final episode of season one of Squid Game: The Challenge, the reality game show spin-off of the 2021 dystopian global hit episodic drama Squid Game . The original drama was an early example of TV internationalisation 2.

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Features versus fandom: Why TikTok is trying to become more like YouTube

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Hanna Kahlert

4 Dec 2023

TikTok’s emergence in Western markets shook the entire social media landscape, by reintroducing what Vine had done over a decade earlier: short-form video. The snappy, to-the-punchline clips were easy to make, easy to share, and easy to consume in a hyper-tailored feed that knew what users wanted to see almost before they saw it.

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The future is interoperability: Why Threads could beat Twitter through the Fediverse

Cover image for The future is interoperability: Why Threads could beat Twitter through the Fediverse

Hanna Kahlert

12 Jul 2023

While Elon Musk has been posturing public beef with Mark Zuckerberg (challenging him to a cage match, practicing with former MMA champions, public callouts on Twitter, requesting very personal measurements), Zuckerberg has responded in a more traditional way (aside from his own training pictures) with the launch of Threads, Twitter’s biggest competitor to-date.

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How to future-proof video entertainment

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Tim Mulligan

23 Mar 2023

Connected TV World Summit

finite digital wallets

This year’s Connected TV World Summit was in many ways a sanity-check on where the wider digital entertainment business is at the end of Q1 2023. The conference is being held amid a backdrop of rolling bank failures, persistent double digit inflation, and an increasingly fragmented global marketplace.

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Greatest Hits Radio is a strategy execution masterclass for ‘old media’ incumbents

Cover image for Greatest Hits Radio is a strategy execution masterclass for ‘old media’ incumbents

Keith Jopling

14 Mar 2023

Credit where it is due, Bauer Media’s launch and rollout of Greatest Hits Radio (GHR) is the best execution of strategy we have seen in a while by an incumbent media business. Not something you would necessarily associate with a commercial radio network brand.

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Amazon demonstrates the viewing power of proven content IP

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Tim Mulligan

7 Sep 2022

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Lord of the Rings

On Saturday, Amazon released the first day viewing figures for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power its billion dollar fantasy original streaming series adapted from the Lord of the Rings universe IP.

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The future of entertainment innovation lies in exclusive experiences, not content

Cover image for The future of entertainment innovation lies in exclusive experiences, not content

Hanna Kahlert

15 Jun 2022

Media and Marketing

In the age before digital engagement went mainstream, entertainment had clear access channels and multiple price points. Video was able to rely on movie tickets, (expensive) TV sets, and the individual purchases of cable subscriptions, video tapes, DVDs, Blu-rays, and their associated equipment; the closest equivalent to subscriptions were Blockbuster or Netflix DVD rental memberships.

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The Kate Bush resurgence shows that music consumption has no time stamp

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Keith Jopling

13 Jun 2022

There are not many good news stories at the moment. It has brightened up my summer a little, though, to see music legend Kate Bush (or ‘our Kate’ if you happen to be British) acknowledge that her song, ‘Running Up That Hill’ , has been “given a whole new lease of life” thanks to the recent sync on the Netflix series Stranger Things.

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MIDiA Consulting looks forward to 2022

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Keith Jopling

2 Dec 2021

Our Consulting Director Keith Jopling reflects on how MIDiA's consulting capability has developed over the past few years. Back when MIDiA first formed, the music industry’s future was still hanging in the balance.

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Why Spotify’s creator strategy needs to pay more attention to fans

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Kriss Thakrar

10 Aug 2021

Spotify’s shift towards becoming an audio platform encompasses a push to become a creator-first business, with a vision of 50 million creators supplying content to a billion users. However, the company’s focus on creators and users may be coming at the expense of artists and fans.

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What is an artist in the age of creators?

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Kriss Thakrar

26 Jul 2021

MIDiA has previously explored what it means to be a superstar in today’s industry. Here we go deeper into the fundamental of what it is to be an artist. YouTuber, boxer and rapper KSI achieved his first number 1 on the UK charts after releasing his new album, All Over the Place.

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Fandom vs Format: Formula One is driving through a new sprint format to push engagement

Cover image for Fandom vs Format: Formula One is driving through a new sprint format to push engagement

Srishti Das

30 Apr 2021

Formula One was one of the many hard-hit sports with the onset of COVID-19 due to its fanless stands. The sport found itself in a crunch with limited sponsorship deals, as cities backing out due to the reduced value the sport offered to the empty streets and stands in host cities.

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What does it mean to 'fix streaming'?

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Keith Jopling

19 Apr 2021

When I wrote a blog for MIDIA in January 2020 I first coined the term the “ Song Economy ”. At the time I saw it as a good thing - a major growth driver for the music industry to increase the value of songs, requiring bigger marketing strategies and in turn, more consumption of those songs: “The Song Economy is the new music industry’s growth engine.

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New artists, does it pay to be streaming first?

Cover image for New artists, does it pay to be streaming first?

Keith Jopling

10 Feb 2021

Streaming Music

This is part 2 of my "marketing long read" posts, part 1 focused on Catalogue . In a recent interview with Steve Lamacq, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters told him “We don’t have anyone else making decisions for us, we do that ourselves”, something a globally successful 10-album rock behemoth can say quite casually.

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Songs are the golden eggs in music catalogues, but who is looking after the goose?

Cover image for Songs are the golden eggs in music catalogues, but who is looking after the goose?

Keith Jopling

20 Jan 2021

music catalogue

Marketing Long Read Part 1: Catalogue & Song Management It will not have escaped your attention that music catalogues are changing hands for serious sums of money. The race to acquire the songwriters’ share is on, and it is speeding up.

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What measures an artist's success in today's music industry?

Cover image for What measures an artist's success in today's music industry?

Keith Jopling

23 Dec 2020

Streaming Music

It’s that time of year again for lists. Endless top albums and song rankings that can be a bonus for a music artist to be included on. A placement on an influential list (which ones those are is more of a debate these days, but let’s say Pitchfork for example, or Rolling Stone, or perhaps Fader or Pigeons & Planes if you are a hip hop artist) might just get you a few more curious eyeballs on socials and a few more streams.

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WWE Q3 Earnings – An innovative digital strategy helps WWE overcome COVID-19 disruption

Cover image for WWE Q3 Earnings – An innovative digital strategy helps WWE overcome COVID-19 disruption

Alistair Taylor

12 Nov 2020

World Wrestling Entertainment

WWE’s Q3 2020 results provide a fascinating insight into how a live event-focused entertainment business has successfully navigated a global pandemic. In its financials for the quarter , WWE saw a 19% revenue increase year-on-year (YoY), with Q3 2020 revenue at $221.

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