Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

MIDiA Research Opens Second Global Songwriter Survey to Tackle Industry Challenges

Tsion Tadesse

18 Mar 2025

[LONDON, March 18, 2025 ] — MIDiA Research has launched a new global survey aimed at uncovering the real-world experiences, income challenges, and career needs of songwriters — the creative forces behind today’s music industry.

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Why do gamers play games? Half say mainly to relax, but the other half has different goals

Rhys Elliott

6 Mar 2025

Audience Insight

Games

Gaming

We are proud to have launched our new gamer segmentation , which focuses on motivations, attitudes, and underlying reasons behind gaming behaviours. This article zooms in on some key data and insights from our segmentation, based on both qualitative and quantitative data.

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YouTube is winning emerging markets by being social – and format-flexible

Hanna Kahlert

5 Mar 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

YouTube

In English-speaking markets (and much of Europe), entertainment consumption is split across a large number of digital platforms, segmented largely by content format, rights access, and legacy uptake. It is also fragmented across devices: smart TVs, smartphones, laptops, and consoles all play big roles in their respective niches.

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Social came for music streaming’s lunch – now is the time for streaming to bite back

Tatiana Cirisano

27 Feb 2025

Audience Insight

Spotify

Facebook

In the battle of music streaming versus social, the major (at least Western) music streaming services have never fully committed to implementing social features. Spotify has come the closest: an early version offered direct messaging, and the company even acquired a handful of social media-related startups in 2016.

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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.

MIDiA's gamer segmentation
Prioritise why – not just how – players engage with games

Cover image for MIDiA's gamer segmentation

Rhys Elliott

February 2025

Amazon

Netflix

Gaming

The games landscape is more dynamic and interconnected than ever, demanding a deeper understanding of why players engage with games – not just how. We are proud to introduce MIDiA’s gamer segmentation, which focuses on motivations, attitudes, and underlying reasons behind gaming behaviours.

Can the smart TV become a canvas for content creation?

Ben Woods

21 Feb 2025

Audience Insight

YouTube

Netflix

YouTube’s growing strength on smart TVs is a head scratching moment for the video industry. The social video platform recently revealed that US consumers watched 1 billion hours of YouTube content daily on their smart TVs in December 2024.

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Jersey club in Berlin | Behind the scenes and sounds of 2025

Kriss Thakrar

29 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

TikTok

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

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The podcast attention game: How algorithmic discovery may remake podcasting

Rutger Rosenborg

29 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Spotify

YouTube

Open the YouTube app on your TV and the first category you will see below “Home” is “Podcasts”. According to the YouTube blog , viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts every month in 2024, just on living room devices alone.

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Sounds of 2025 | MIDiA and Splice name Pluggnb music’s fastest-growing genre

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

YouTube

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

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Splice x MIDiA Sounds of 2025

Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano, Samuel Griffin, Mark Qi and Olivia Jones

January 2025

Free Report

Splice

Audience Insight

Splice is an engine powering producers across the world. With one ofthe largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, itprovides the music that makes the music for some of the most popularartists on the planet. Sabrina Carpenter’s hit “Espresso”, produced byJulian Bunetta, is a key recent example, with a sound pack by influentialproducer Oliver featuring prominently.

The podcast listener journey reveals a desire for human connection

Rutger Rosenborg

21 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

YouTube

TikTok

As the global podcast industry zeros in on video – especially social video – one overlooked discovery source has never really gone away: word of mouth. Despite a format that was born to be digital, podcasting still relies on the most analog of recommendation systems for discovery in the US, UK, and France.

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Before and after podcasts
Mapping the podcast listener journey

Cover image for Before and after podcasts

Rutger Rosenborg

January 2025

US

UK

France

The global importance of video for podcasting extends into the unique market dynamics of the US, UK, France, Mexico, and Japan. Not only does this justify Spotify’s strategic video push, but it also indicates a need for other platforms to follow suit.

What gamers really think about gen AI in games
Apathy, not outrage

Cover image for What gamers really think about gen AI in games

Rhys Elliott

December 2024

Audience Insight

Game development budgets have spiralled out of control, leading game executives to cut costs and streamline their game development processes. It is no secret that generative AI (gen AI) is the tech industry’s current buzzword, but its potential is still disputed despite the hype.

Will audio have a seat at the creator economy table?

Rutger Rosenborg

18 Dec 2024

Amazon Music

Spotify

Podcasts

As 2024 comes to a close, it is worth reflecting on this year’s audio trends and where we expect things to head in 2025. Per our recent report, ‘ MIDiA’s 2025 predictions: It’s social’s stage now ’, social platforms will continue to take centre stage on the heels of the creator economy reshaping entertainment in the first half of the 2020s.

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Overanalysing our Spotify Wrapped: what MIDiA’s stats say about the industry

Tatiana Cirisano

12 Dec 2024

Spotify Wrapped

Music

Audience Insight

Last year, as Spotify’s annual Wrapped series hit the internet, MIDiA did what we do best: analyse, publishing a blog piece on what our own year-end data reflects about the state of music streaming and fandom.

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Global South rising
Streaming audiences in China, Turkey, and South Africa

Tatiana Cirisano

November 2024

Spotify

YouTube

Deezer

It is increasingly clear that the future of the global music streaming business relies heavily on the Global South markets, which include Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of World. Most subscription growth is coming from these regions, which will collectively dominate the global music subscriber base by 2031, according to MIDiA’s global music forecasts.

Visionary audio
Unlocking the power of video in podcasting

Rutger Rosenborg

November 2024

brand partnerships

spotify podcasts

podcast creators

YouTube may be the only viable platform for long-form video podcasts, but that does not mean audio-first podcast platforms should abandon video. Instead, podcast platforms should leverage video both as a podcast format and as a marketing driver to increase podcast discovery and consumption.

Are social platforms losing the next generation to Roblox and Fortnite?

Ben Woods

15 Nov 2024

Roblox

TikTok

YouTube

Unpacking social media strategy is now part and parcel of any election postmortem. From Elon Musk’s ownership of X to Donald Trump’s use of creators to target Gen Z men, understanding social’s role in the US election is to understand how influence is wielded in the digital age.

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Socioeconomics of podcast listening
Engaging a higher value audience

Cover image for Socioeconomics of podcast listening

Rutger Rosenborg

October 2024

Creators

Subscriptions

Radio

Podcasts alone will struggle to monetise via subscriptions, leaving advertising as podcasts’ key source of revenue for the foreseeable future. However, podcasts do attract high-earning, high-spending audiences, which are often hard to reach with conventional advertising.