Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

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

15 Jan 2025

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 – is booming.

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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 impact their artists in the new year, the number one track on TikTok in 2024 was not by an American act at all.

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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 of the ancient world.

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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 its space at the heart of entertainment.

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It’s social’s stage now: MIDiA’s 2025 predictions webinar

Mark Mulligan

28 Nov 2024

predictions

2025 predictions

tech trends

One of my favourite parts of the MIDiA year is creating the MIDiA predictions report and webinar. It is always a true team effort, with our team of analysts spending weeks brainstorming ideas, proposing predictions, stress testing those to within an inch of their lives, and then writing the report.

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The BlueSky migration: How cultural shifts can disrupt even the most established social media platforms

Hanna Kahlert

19 Nov 2024

Bluesky

mastodon

Twitter

Twitter clones have proliferated since Elon Musk first bought and renamed the platform to X in 2022. Despite a lot of buzz around platforms like Mastodon and BlueSky, none have seemed to capture a significant audience, with X’s weekly active usage remaining consistent.

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Info-tainment, Kamala’s campaign failure, and the distortive role of social media marketing

Hanna Kahlert

12 Nov 2024

Marketing Strategy

Social media

trump presidency

The recent US election has capped off one of the biggest global election years in recent history, and the world around us is changing rapidly. Digital life, and specifically social media platforms, play a huge role in both how we have got to where we are and where we are going next.

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Social platforms are eating passive entertainment. Are games eating social?

Hanna Kahlert

22 Oct 2024

Social

Social media

Gaming

At Sony Music’s Interactive Tech Day in London on 22nd October, gaming was, ironically, the highlight. From artist takeovers of Roblox destinations to concert-type experiences in Fortnite Islands, the company’s music strategy is increasingly crossing over with the gaming world – a goal mirrored in the increasing closeness of Sony Music and Sony Interactive Entertainment, according to their respective speakers at the event.

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AI, dead internet theory, and why analogue is a future-proof business strategy

Hanna Kahlert

8 Oct 2024

dead internet

analogue revival

analogue

The internet is abuzz over Google NotebookLM’s eerily realistic-sounding podcasts. Last week, MIDiA wrote about how it will disrupt primarily information-driven podcasting, rather than entertainment podcasts with human flair (for now).

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AI podcasts: Google’s NotebookLM will disrupt — not destroy — podcasting

Rutger Rosenborg

2 Oct 2024

AI

Podcasts

Google

On the heels of a North Carolina man being indicted for music streaming fraud, questions about AI and audio — especially as it pertains to intellectual property (IP) rights — continue to swirl. Now, Google's new NotebookLM and its "audio overview" feature are raising questions for audiobook and podcast creators.

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As audio goes long-form, podcasts and audiobooks converge

Rutger Rosenborg

18 Sep 2024

Podcasts

Audiobooks

rss

Songs may be getting shorter, but many of the most popular podcasts are not. As Ashley Carman reports for Bloomberg , Lex Fridman’s August 2024 episode with Elon Musk reached almost nine hours, while Steven Bartlett’s Andrew Huberman interview reached four.

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Analogue revival
A cultural pendulum swing

Hanna Kahlert

September 2024

Cultural trends

From the dumb phone trend to a vinyl revival, analogue has been back on the rise in the cultural zeitgeist. This could shake up the digital ecosystem and unlock potential opportunities for entertainment –– but the 'why’ behind the trend needs to be better understood to action the opportunity to its full potential.

BlueSky benefits from X’s Brazil ban: a fragmenting social ecosystem is shaky ground for incumbents

Hanna Kahlert

10 Sep 2024

market

Brazil

Bluesky

X has long been the social platform of ‘on the pulse’ news updates and cultural happenings. Its users over-index for using social platforms to keep up with news and culture (as outlined in our social platform user behaviour report ), and its high-profile posts often make it into the broader news cycle and dictate coverage and strategy.

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‘Song of the summer’ may be dead, but 2024 was the summer of song

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Aug 2024

fragmented fandom

Music streaming

Social media

Over the past few years, MIDiA has often remarked at the lack of a “song of the summer” . There was once a singular undeniable hit each summer, one that everyone could agree on, like ‘One Dance’ was to 2016 or ‘Despacito’ to 2017.

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Instagram and the download-delete cycle: a cultural shift for social platforms

Hanna Kahlert

13 Aug 2024

Social

analogue revival

ecommerce

Forget the tech-centric sci-fi future promised by the early 2000’s; the new aspiration is going offline. Analogue is the new ‘cool’, and it is not just about nostalgia. Audiences are searching for authenticity, connection, novelty, experience, and tangible ownership of the things they love, all of which are scarce now in an oversaturated digital environment .

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The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

Rutger Rosenborg

7 Aug 2024

AI

Audio

Cultural trends

In March, on the heels of a Danish man becoming the first person convicted of streaming fraud, MIDiA explained how AI could soon enable a golden age of audio piracy . Coupled with the fact that book publishers have been reporting that AI-generated books are being published under their names or oddly similar ones on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, there are big implications for audiobooks.

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Algorithms, AI, truth, and trust: why social platforms should be worried about the riots

Hanna Kahlert

6 Aug 2024

Social

Cultural trends

Social platforms have had a rocky history with misinformation, from US election cycles to social unrest . Over time, platforms have alleged new restrictions and guidelines intended to help reduce the risks.

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Music isn’t getting worse, genre is

Mark Mulligan

10 Jul 2024

genre

music genre

Music culture

A couple of weeks ago Rick Beato put out a video titled “ The real reason why music is getting worse” . The core arguments centre around too many people making music, and tech making it both easier to make music and for people to be lazy creators.

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Commodification’s kickbacks: trends emerging in the pendulum swing back from content overload and AI

Hanna Kahlert

18 Jun 2024

Fandom

monetisation

trends

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the state of entertainment (and culture more broadly). AI generated content is taking up ever-larger swathes of the internet. Passive consumption drives high numbers that don’t translate into value, and remuneration for music creators is low while profits at labels are up.

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