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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.

Addison Rae will not be owned: The pitfalls of the major label business model

Kriss Thakrar

25 Mar 2021

Major labels TikTok Independent artists

TikTok stars are rejecting major labels. It is no secret that major labels are being outpaced by independent artists in the overall market. Addison Rae has a combined following of over 100 million between TikTok and Instagram alone, and she has leveraged her position to independently put together an...

4 min read

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F1 Drive to Survive: The rise of a Motorsport Multiverse

Srishti Das

24 Mar 2021

Video F1 Drive to Survive

Netflix’s Drive to Survive was one of the first media projects taken up by Liberty Media after it bought the keys to Formula One (F1) in 2017. The first season aired in March 2019, bringing with it a much-needed digital reboot to a historically linear TV sports offering.

5 min read

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IFPI confirms global recorded music revenue growth

Mark Mulligan

23 Mar 2021

Music Business Strategy

Last week MIDiA reported that recorded music revenues grew by 7% in 2020. Today the IFPI confirmed that figure, reporting 7.4% growth. (Similarly, the IFPI reported 19.9% growth for streaming, MIDiA had 19.

3 min read

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The billion-dollar content play: Why Amazon is intentionally overpaying for its NFL rights

Tim Mulligan

22 Mar 2021

SVOD Sports content sports rights

In March 2021, the sports ecosystem breathed a collective sigh of relief. The NFL, the world’s most valuable sports league, secured an 11-year broadcast deal worth a staggering $100 billion (via CNBC ).

4 min read

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Women creators: This is also our business

Srishti Das

22 Mar 2021

women creators women in music Music

MIDiA, in conjunction with TuneCore and Believe, is about to publish the findings of a global survey on the experiences of 401 female creators in the music industry: artists, songwriters, producers, DJs and creator managers, asking them to tell their own stories as the foundation for greater industr...

3 min read

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Roblox, piracy and the future of music in UGC 2.0

Kriss Thakrar

19 Mar 2021

user-generated content music piracy Roblox

A community of Roblox users are losing a battle against moderation as the platform cracks down on music piracy, due to the platform’s newly public status bringing with it a new level of responsibility.

4 min read

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What does the NFT hype mean for artists?

Hanna Kahlert

18 Mar 2021

Media and Marketing NFT non fungible token

Soon after the #GameStonks event of January 2021 , Elon Musk reined in the increasingly investment-savvy digital sphere back around to cryptocurrency, using his Tesla company to purchase $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and announcing that it planned to accept Bitcoin as payment.

5 min read

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Why Roblox is well set to withstand the COVID bounce effect

Karol Severin

15 Mar 2021

Roblox lean-in consumption dyi

Roblox has launched an initial public offering (IPO) this week. Timing-wise, the twice-delayed IPO aligns with the world getting closer to opening up, and out-of-home competitive pressures returning. This invites questions around how much of the current valuation is aided by a temporary, artificial ...

4 min read

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Recorded music revenues hit $23.1 billion in 2020, with artists direct the winners – again

Mark Mulligan

15 Mar 2021

Recorded music revenue 2020 musc revenues 2020 label market shares 2020

The global pandemic caused widespread disruption to the music business, in particular decimating the live business and impacting publisher public performance royalties. Although the recorded music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industr...

3 min read

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Streaming censorship: The threat to India’s growing importance in the global marketplace

Srishti Das

12 Mar 2021

Online video Censorship India

Video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar have been fortunate to experience minimum restrictions on content from Indian regulators as they established themselves. However, this is all now changing.

4 min read

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Native Instruments and iZotope: creator tools major in the making

Mark Mulligan

11 Mar 2021

Music Business Strategy

At the start of the year private equity firm Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in creator tools stalwart Native Instruments. It always looked like it was going to be the start of something big and today we saw the next step on Native’s new journey, with leading audio plugin company iZot...

4 min read

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Disney+ at 100 million: The second shockwave of the D2C big bang moment has begun

Tim Mulligan

10 Mar 2021

Disney+ Disney D2C Shockwave

At its annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Disney announced that Disney+ had reached the 100 million subscriber mark in the 16 months since it first launched. For comparison, global subscription video on demand (SVOD) leader Netflix has taken 14 years to reach 203 million subscribers.

3 min read

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Is gaming the solution to sports’ Gen Z problem?

Alistair Taylor

8 Mar 2021

Gaming Games esports

It has been well-documented that Gen Z’s and Generation Alpha’s interest in watching live sports has waned . It is important to dispel the notion that the younger cohorts are less likely to engage with sports, but rather to appreciate that they just consume them differently .

5 min read

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Women making music: The COVID impact

Hanna Kahlert

8 Mar 2021

Music women in music international womens day

The last 12 months have been marked mostly by the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed much of life to the digital world. 70% of independent artists overall spent much of the time over lockdowns creating more music, many taking more autonomy over their own marketing and production.

3 min read

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The music business in 2021: Joining the dots

Mark Mulligan

4 Mar 2021

Music Cultural trends

It has been one of those weeks, with impactful music business announcements coming thick and fast. As is often the case, a succession of apparently unrelated events actually have a connecting thread. In this instance there are three: 1.

4 min read

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Fans come first in the attention recession

Hanna Kahlert

2 Mar 2021

Media and Marketing Fandom Media

As vaccine rollouts gain momentum, the clock is ticking on the attention boom enabled by lockdowns over the last 12 months. The 12% of additional time spent on entertainment is going to contract sharply as consumers are freed to spend time outside of their homes on pre-pandemic activities and compel...

4 min read

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Smaller independents and artists direct grew fastest in 2020

Mark Mulligan

1 Mar 2021

Spotify Streaming Music Independent labels

Last year we identified a small but crucial metric from Spotify’s annual report: the share of all streams accounted for by majors and independent licensing body Merlin. It was crucial because it enabled us to segment the streaming market in detail, when combined with market data from majors and in...

3 min read

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Reach over revenue: India’s lesson for developed sports markets

Srishti Das

26 Feb 2021

cricket hotstar Disney+

India is growing as a sporting nation, with athletes performing across different international sports outside of cricket like kabaddi, motorsports, basketball, and chess. The majority of media consumption in India’s sports industry, however, comes from the Indian Premier League (IPL).

3 min read

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Paramount + gets ready to compete outside the traditional video streaming lane

Tim Mulligan

25 Feb 2021

Paramount+ paramount plus d2c

Yesterday was a big day for ViacomCBS. The year of integration and uncertainty following the merger of Viacom and CBS in December 2019 has finally ended. The core rationale behind both key constituents of the National Amusements media empire to join together is now coming to fruition.

4 min read

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Clubhouse session: Is attention killing culture?

Mark Mulligan

24 Feb 2021

Media and Marketing Cultural trends

Join myself, Hanna Kahlert and Karol Severin Thursday 25that 5pm GMT / noon EST / 9am PT on Clubhouse for discussion of the Attention Economy’s second order effects on culture and creativity. In this session we will be exploring how the focus on capturing audiences’ time and attention at all cos...

1 min read

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