Reports: Fandom

Browse all of our reports, featuring our analysts' expert insights and analysis of audience segmentation, emerging trends and technologies, value chains, market shares, predictions and more – backed by our proprietary survey data and bespoke models & forecasts. Become a subscriber to get new ones every month, or just pick one to get started.

Flipping the script
Game IP transmedia needs to evolve

Cover image for Flipping the script

Rhys Elliott

May 2025

Amazon

Netflix

Xbox

The entertainment landscape is changing. As superhero fatigue sets in, game IP is now dominating screens, from HBO’s The Last of Us to the Minecraft movie. Unlike movie trends (Westerns, superhero movies), the game-to-movie trend is here to stay, as the games market is a cross-genre treasure trove of beloved IP and fandom, with new IP arriving frequently.

Pixels to playlists
Music preferences and behaviours of gamers

Cover image for Pixels to playlists

Rhys Elliott

March 2025

Innovation

Labels

US

The global games industry is a $236.9 billion behemoth. It now rivals film, television, and music combined in terms of revenues and is a cultural driver. Yet, for music companies, labels, and platforms, gaming represents more than a parallel market: it is agateway to the world’s most engaged, tech-savvy, and monetisable audience.

Music streaming consumer profile Q4 2024
Stabilisation and fandom slowdown

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

February 2025

Willingness to pay

Music consumers

Streaming

Consumer music behaviours are both stabilising and showing signs of coming change. Change that could be challenging for all music business stakeholders, especially with regards to fandom monetisation. This report presents data-focused visuals and impactful analysis of trends and anomalies that will inform your understanding of what is happening to today’s music consumer, why it is happening, and where these trends are heading.

The superfans of music superstars
Identity and cut-through

Cover image for The superfans of music superstars

Olivia Jones

February 2025

Labels

US

Artists

Fandom is becoming the music industry’s golden goose, with labels focusing on building and monetising superfan bases for their top artists. However, superfan behaviours are changing in response to oversaturation and hyper-fragmentation. What once worked for measuring and monetising fandom will not work the same in the future.

Songwriters take the stage
A new playbook for a new era

Cover image for Songwriters take the stage

Tatiana Cirisano and Fernanda Balzaretti

July 2024

Streaming

Spotify

music industry

The streaming era upended the already-fraught business of being a songwriter, pushing songwriters to secure new revenue streams and better deal terms. While the recorded music industry has responded to similar shifts with a flourishing artist services market, the same is not true for songwriters.

The state and future of music fandom
Unleashing fan creativity

Cover image for The state and future of music fandom

Tatiana Cirisano

August 2023

Spotify

YouTube

SoundCloud

Streaming is buckling under the weight of new music being released every day, listenership is fragmenting, and artificial intelligence is poised to intensify these challenges. The music industry’s next era of growth lies in monetising fandom, not consumption.

Kill the campaign
Music marketing needs branding, not direct response

Cover image for Kill the campaign

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

February 2023

Streaming

Spotify

Marketing

The debate over a new streaming royalties regime is capturing attention, but economics will not fix the underlying paradigm shifts that are the true cause for streaming’s problems: there is not enough money to go around for the ballooning amount of music on streaming services, and passive consumption is the new norm.

Lean-through consumption
Communities are key

Cover image for Lean-through consumption

Hanna Kahlert

August 2022

Spotify

YouTube

Netflix

Entertainment consumption is increasingly shaped by context, as consumers are driven by attention saturation to overlap behaviours as well as choose between them. Different forms of entertainment are better suited to different contexts, with some lending themselves to more social behaviours than others.

The future of music
The rise of a counterculture industry

Cover image for The future of music

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

June 2022

Consumer behaviour

Spotify

Music creators

Music streaming and the attention recession have turned music into a background activity. Artists en masse are struggling to cut through the noise, realising that streaming is neither a place to build deeper relationships with fans nor to generate meaningful income.

Fandom drivers
From fan psychology to NFT demand

Cover image for Fandom drivers

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin, Srishti Das and Tatiana Cirisano

January 2022

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.

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

August 2021

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.

Sports fan consumer snapshot, Q2 2021
US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea, Brazil

Cover image for Sports fan consumer snapshot, Q2 2021

Tim Mulligan

August 2021

Streaming

Video

Fandom

This slide deck presents sports fan consumer demand, covering video services, live TV sports viewing, sports highlight viewing, free live digital sports viewing, device viewing, sports betting, fantasy sports penetration, TV genre preferences, and sports type preferences.

Entertainment fandom
Monetise fandom, not attention

Cover image for Entertainment fandom

Mark Mulligan

March 2021

music fans

Fandom

Twitch

In the attention economy, entertainment consumption is intertwined and competition straddles formats and genres. The same applies to fandom. Entertainment fans are fans of not just multiple subgenres within one entertainment category, but instead across multiple entertainment formats.

2020 in review
Lockdown legacy impacts on entertainment

Cover image for 2020 in review

Hanna Kahlert

February 2021

Streaming

Netflix

Netflix

Digital connections have filled the void left by real-world activities, globalising culture and experience. Yet this comes at the cost of deepening divides in trust and perspective. Changing economic circumstances have brought about a demographic dichotomy of age and income.

OTT Distribution and Partnerships
StreamTV Growth Summit 2021

Cover image for OTT Distribution and Partnerships

Tim Mulligan

February 2021

Streaming

Fandom

Audience Insight

OTT Distribution and Partnerships A MIDiA Research Presentation for StreamTV Growth Summit 2021

Music Product Strategy Re-boot
Time to Monetise Fandom, Not Access

Cover image for Music Product Strategy Re-boot

Mark Mulligan

January 2021

Innovation

Spotify

Spotify

As streaming reaches maturity in many of the largest music markets and middle-tier artists struggle to make ends meet with the live music hiatus, the time has come for a music product strategy re-boot – for a bold, new wave of music products that look to build beyond streaming, delivering increased income for both rights holders and creators.

Killing Eve – A Case Study in Analysing Show Fandom

Cover image for Killing Eve – A Case Study in Analysing Show Fandom

Tim Mulligan

September 2020

BBC

Fandom

AMC

Killing Eve season three was released in April 2020, the third instalment of a critically acclaimed genre-hopping comedy/drama spy thriller about a female intelligence operative obsessively hunting a female assassin. Defying conventional four-quadrant programming, the franchise has stood out amidst a bevy of more conventional competitors.

Consumer Engagement
Building Sustainable Brands in 2020 and Beyond

Cover image for Consumer Engagement

Hanna Kahlert

April 2020

Marketing

YouTube

Netflix

Brands have an ongoing engagement problem. No matter how much data they use or how targeted they go, competition is fierce, consumer attention is saturated, and all usage comes at the expense of time spent elsewhere. With the ubiquity of advertising, brand choices are as much a personal statement by the consumer to their peers as a testament to trust and loyalty in a company.

TV Network Brand Fandom and Awareness

Tim Mulligan

March 2020

Fandom

tv networks

data

General Notes This data report presents consumer brand awareness and fandom for TV networks across the US, UK, Canada and Australia. The data is taken from MIDiA’s Quarterly Video Brand Tracker with a nationally representative, quarterly-only sample of 4,000 consumers aged 16+.

Building Show Fandom in the Streaming Era

Cover image for Building Show Fandom in the Streaming Era

Tim Mulligan

February 2020

Apple

Spotify

Marketing

The direct-to-consumer (D2C) video big bang moment is getting into stride, with Peacock and HBO Max following Apple TV+ and Disney+ into the already-congested video streaming marketplace. TV show marketing teams now face unprecedented competition for audience attention and mindshare.

1
2
›

Showing 1 to 20 of 29 results.