Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

What happens to entertainment in a gamified US economy?

Hanna Kahlert

15 Apr 2025

Key takeaways from this blog: President Trump'sproposed tariffshave shaken the stock market, with trust in the US economy weakening Unpredictable policies, including the US TikTok ban, are making conditions...

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Cultural movements
A new take on mainstream for the fragmentation era

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

April 2025

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...

Online culture is fragmenting: Why White Lotus spoilers are not flooding the internet

Hanna Kahlert

9 Apr 2025

Cultural trends

TikTok

Streaming

Key takeaways from this blog: Audience fragmentation is growing, with platforms like TikTok losing influence and shows like White Lotus thriving in niche, offline conversations Oversaturation of content...

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If the internet dies, where does all the attention go?

Hanna Kahlert

2 Apr 2025

Cultural trends

TikTok

Instagram

Key takeaways from this blog: Social platforms dominate culture, but a vibe shift toward offline experiences is emerging as users crave more intentional, less addictive engagement (as explored in MIDiA's'...

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Music is losing a generation of young men

Kriss Thakrar

31 Mar 2025

Music

Social media

Entertainment

Key insights from this blog: Netflix’s hit Adolescence has renewed conversation around the radicalisation of young men, particularly in online spaces MIDiA’s research highlights that all entertainment...

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Cultural forecasting: how socio-economic moods can predict trends

Laura Fisher

26 Mar 2025

Cultural trends

Music

Entertainment

The entertainment industry is at a pivot point. For decades success relied on spotting emerging trends and amplifying them. This reactive model worked when cultural movements developed slowly through physical...

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How the DNA of a hit changed in the last five years

Olivia Jones

14 Mar 2025

Cultural trends

Music

Music streaming

Key insights from this blog: The second installment of MIDiA's "DNA of a hit" blog series looks at how the hits on Billboard's Top 10 chart have changed in the last five years Key MIDiA data highlights...

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Meritocracy only works if the door is open in the first place: International Women’s Day in 2025

Hanna Kahlert

11 Mar 2025

Cultural trends

consumers

women in music

Key insights from this blog: This International Women's Day, celebrations of women's accomplishments were overshadowed by industry developments and political decisions Women are consumers too – it is...

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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...

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Mining fandom: Music’s Drive to Survive moment

Ben Woods

28 Feb 2025

Marketing Strategy

Netflix

Music

Netflix’s Drive to Survive did more than introduce a new entertainment layer for sports fans. The F1 docuseries provided a framework for re-igniting and nurturing fandom. Before then, sports documentaries...

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Bootlegging is the scourge of many industries. Could it be music’s greatest strength?

Tatiana Cirisano

7 Feb 2025

Fandom

Spotify

YouTube

The word “bootleg” has long left a bad taste in brands’ mouths. Quite literally defined as “illicit goods,” these unauthorised versions or replications of clothes, handbags, concert tees, and...

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The unflattening of music

Mark Mulligan

30 Jan 2025

Cultural trends

Spotify

TikTok

[This post builds on two other recent MIDiA posts: Background music and What got you here ] At the half way point of the decade it is a good time to reflect on how the business of music is reshaping the...

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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...

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Creators and the creator economy
Defining the undefinable

Cover image for Creators and the creator economy

Karol Severin, Hanna Kahlert and Ben Woods

January 2025

Creators

Cultural trends

Creator economy

20 years since the launch of YouTube, the creator economy is not new – but it lacks a single clear definition. Different interest groups who interact with it all have their perspectives, but this lack...

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...

min read

The future is podcast scenes: What podcasters can learn from history podcast success

Rutger Rosenborg

15 Jan 2025

Cultural trends

Audio

Podcasts

Whether the result of eschatological anxiety caused by shifting global political alignments or the decline in humanities students in academic institutions, the business of history – especially in audio...

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How a US TikTok ban could accelerate the rise of the Global South

Tatiana Cirisano

9 Jan 2025

global south

TikTok

Music

Amid a flurry of year-end lists released last month, TikTok published a ranking of the platform’s most popular songs. While US music executives have been busy considering how a potential TikTok ban could...

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Audiobooks enter their entertainment era

Rutger Rosenborg

8 Jan 2025

Spotify

Audiobooks

Audible

It is easy to forget that the audiobook is not a new format. Novels, stories, and poems – much of what the modern world knows best through the written word – all have their origins in the oral traditions...

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Musk calls UK government ‘tyrannical’ and TikTok could leave the US: is global culture going regional again?

Hanna Kahlert

7 Jan 2025

social media,

tiktok ban

elon musk

A swath of elections in 2024 have paved the way for regulatory changes in the social media sphere, with talk of bans and restrictions meeting the governmental meddling of CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg....

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MIDiA’s five games trends to watch in 2025

Rhys Elliott

19 Dec 2024

Switch

20 second song

xbox game pass

The year 2024 has been eventful for the games market to say the least. Call of Duty came to Game Pass, Sony released its PS5 Pro console, live-service games faced a reckoning, and gaming has solidified...

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