Reports: Cultural trends

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Cultural movements
A new take on mainstream for the fragmentation era

Cover image for Cultural movements
Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano
Entertainment
mainstream
Cultural trends
Entertainment has become nichified, mainstream has become smaller, and audiences have fragmented. While this has been crucial to the rise of the long tail and the creator economy, there is a need for a new, fragmentation-era successor to mainstream. Building upon MIDiA’s work on scenes, in this report we make the case for cultural movements, the cultural pyramid, and how entertainment audiences operate in the fragmentation era.
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Death of the town square
Social fragmentation and a decentralised digital future

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Hanna Kahlert
Cultural trends
Social platforms have long ‘civilised’ the online world by providing common gathering grounds, but internal disruption and proliferating competition threaten this status quo. While the dominant players are unlikely to change substantially, competition, on-platform feature fragmentation, and algorithmic ‘filter bubbles’ will dilute social platforms’ common-ground value.
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Reintroducing scarcity
How entertainment can find value amid the growing digital clutter

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Hanna Kahlert
Apple TV
Disney
Instagram
Games, sports, music, video, audio, and social content all compete not only for consumers’ attention (and money), but also their fandom. However, the oversaturation of content is devaluing entertainment itself, by overly commodifying it. Entertainment businesses and content providers will need to rethink how to generate better value for audiences, especially if they want to make true fans of those audiences – especially in an environment of recession (both in the global economy and consumer attention).
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Social 2.0
Social media’s survival of the fittest, and how marketers fit in

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Ashleigh Millar
YouTube
Netflix
Facebook
The history of social media has long been defined by continual evolution and iteration, but now shifts across the value chain are becoming more substantive, heralding a new era. Social platforms themselves are changing, and so too are the attitudes, expectations, and behaviours of their users, with audiences’ appetites for carefully curated, heavily edited posts turning sour, and their thirst for authentic, participatory content growing stronger.
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The shift indoors
Entertainment audiences’ search for the affordable and the meaningful

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Hanna Kahlert
Apple TV
Netflix
Disney
The Covid-19 entertainment boom is over; we are now in a highly competitive attention recession characterised largely by the attention inflation driven from accelerating rates of multitasking. This is compounded by serious global events and a cost-of-living crisis which will reduce the money audiences have available to spend on digital entertainment.
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State of the music creator economy
Post-lockdown growth

Cover image for State of the music creator economy
Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano
Apple
Spotify
live
The Covid pandemic created a unique catalyst for the music creator economy. More time on hands and more cash in pockets gave novices and veterans alike the opportunity to spend both more time and money making music. Though the pandemic was a peak, it also marked the start of a new era for the music creator economy across every one of its aspects, from revenue to creation to remuneration.
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Re-creating the creator economy

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Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan, Karol Severin, Hanna Kahlert, Srishti Das, Kriss Thakrar, Ashleigh Millar, Tatiana Cirisano, Annie Langston and Richard Broadhurst
Apple
Spotify
YouTube
Streaming first democratised the means of consumption, then distribution, and now production. Though the promise of the long tail may not have materialised quite as expected, long-tail and mid-tail creators are now a central component of the digital-entertainment economy.
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Consumers as creators
The artist / audience line is blurring

Cover image for Consumers as creators
Hanna Kahlert
Consumer behaviour
Apple
Netflix
The growing independent artists sector, the rise of user-generated content (UGC), and the proliferation of basic creator tools on social platforms are all interlinked parts of the same cultural trend: creativity as a product. Enabled by intuitive creative tools, platforms to share on, and direct, easy ways to engage with creators, the barrier between artist and audience has been dramatically lowered.
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Fandom drivers
From fan psychology to NFT demand

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Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin, Srishti Das and Tatiana Cirisano
superfan
Spotify
merchandise
Fandom is entertainment’s growth currency, yet it remains both under-valued and poorly understood. While other entertainment currencies can be accurately measured (number of streams, number of sales, number of views, etc.) it is only the effects of fandom that can be quantified (number of likes / shares, merchandise sales, etc.
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The four key cultural trends transforming digital entertainment in 2021 and beyond

Cover image for The four key cultural trends transforming digital entertainment in 2021 and beyond
Hanna Kahlert
Marketing
live
Amazon
The effect of streaming on entertainment is not new, but as we move into the era of mainstream vaccinations, the shifts in streaming-driven consumer behaviour over the last year and a half will drive fundamental changes. From the rise of virtual events to the fall of the box office opening weekend, underpinned by the swift commodification of content pushing consumers towards lean-in behaviours, this is the post-pandemic new normal.
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