Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

Cultural trends

Are we approaching an analogue revival?

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Hanna Kahlert

11 Jan 2024

It is now 2024 (yikes), and New Year’s resolutions are making the rounds. Anecdotally, at least seven of us at MIDiA have resolved to go more analogue this year. More broadly, many people, alongside the traditional attempts to go to the gym more or do ‘Dry January’, seem to be opting to cut down on their social media and broader smartphone usage.

min read

Despite its hyper-futurism, 2023 was a return to the past

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Tatiana Cirisano

21 Dec 2023

From politics to tech to entertainment, the past few years can best be described as unprecedented. In 2023, daily life felt especially futuristic and surreal, with artificial intelligence dominating the discourse.

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2024 will be a year of change (as if there has not been enough already)

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Hanna Kahlert

19 Dec 2023

Four years ago today, the Covid-19 pandemic was but a rumour on the wind. Since then, it would be an understatement to say that much has changed. Digital entertainment consumption boomed and rapidly overwhelmed all forms of activity, making it almost hard to remember what entertainment was like pre-pandemic.

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MIDiA’s 2024 predictions: The algorithm is not listening

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Mark Mulligan

18 Dec 2023

midia predictions

2024 predictions

tech predictions

November is one of my favourite times of year, as an analyst anyways. Why? Because it is when the MIDiA team pool their collective brainpower to formulate our end-of-year predictions. What gives our predictions their unique angle is that they are constructed within an inter-connected framework, factoring in the cross-industry trends that will shape the coming years.

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AI copyright lawsuits beg the bigger question: How valuable is digital content?

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Hanna Kahlert

10 Nov 2023

The future of artificial intelligence (AI) is currently caught between earth-shaking promise on one side, and a tangle of ongoing litigation on the other. This week’s OpenAI keynote painted an exciting future for generative AI, with updates including customisation and integration capabilities for ChatGPT.

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Does culture become a commodity, or do commodities become culture?

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Hanna Kahlert

5 Oct 2023

Cultural trends

More than three fourths of audiences believe that the music they listen to reflects who they are. This rises to more than four fifths of people aged 25-44. Music listening is also incredibly personal –roughly a third of people listen to playlists they curate themselves when exercising, hanging out with friends, working or studying, or just when they are out and about.

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The future of AI will orient around datasets… which will put the user in a front-and-centre blind spot

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Hanna Kahlert

6 Sep 2023

The rise of generative AI has thrown the future of creators (of all industries) into question, with copyright being the key to how it all plays out. Models like ChatGPT have an input-output ‘black-box’ problem, which means that whatever goes into training the models cannot be traced to what comes out.

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AI, music rights, and known unknowns

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Mark Mulligan

31 Aug 2023

artificial intelligence

The music industry is approaching a tipping point, with the building blocks of what will be the post-streaming era beginning to fall into place.The streaming era will make way for something new. Innovation, disruption, and change will define the coming years, with AI, fandom, and the creator economy centre stage.

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Up close and personal: when the algorithm goes too far

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Tatiana Cirisano

24 Aug 2023

artificial intelligence

Today’s entertainment world is characterised by hyper-personalisation. Everyone has a unique TikTok feed tailored specifically to their own niches. DSP playlists have names like “For You” and “Made For [username]”.

min read

AI is the new digital ad industry… but the stakes are far greater

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Hanna Kahlert

9 Aug 2023

Zoom has been making the news this week over its controversial new terms and conditions that now allow the service (in theory) to utilise user data to train its AI-assisted features. While the company has reassured the public that they need to opt into the usage, which is necessary to use its AI functions like generating transcripts, privacy concerns are still high.

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Barbenheimer, the Hollywood strikes, and AI: Is film at a cultural turning point?

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Hanna Kahlert

20 Jul 2023

After an exciting boom period in film and TV productions made for digital-first streaming platforms, the downsides seem to be catching up. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2nd (2023), signalling the biggest disruption to TV and film production since Covid-19.

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Less is more, but it’s already all ‘too much’: The rise of digital disengagement

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Hanna Kahlert

5 Jul 2023

A new Europol report has predicted that as much as 90% of all content on the internet could be ‘synthetically generated’ (made or modified by AI) by 2026. That is a two-and-a-half-year window and closing, with the end result being only a small minority of online content having been conceived of, much less created by, actual humans.

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The music industry’s tipping point is Right Here, Right Now

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Mark Mulligan

29 Jun 2023

virtual artists

streaming remuneration

Streaming is buckling under its own weight. The economics and structure that served it well in its first decade are not the ones that will get it through the next ten years. You might say that streaming is going through its ‘start up to scale up’ phase.

min read

Social platforms are going niche: the end of copycat features

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Hanna Kahlert

28 Jun 2023

It has long been a recurring strategy for social platforms to borrow one another’s successful features – to the benefit of the incumbents, and the difficulty of new players trying to break through.

min read

The tap water music industry needs to become a bottled one

Cover image for The tap water music industry needs to become a bottled one

Kriss Thakrar

20 Jun 2023

Music streaming

Creator economy

Music and water are often compared to each other in the streaming age. There are many ways to express this analogy, but the bottom line is that music is becoming commoditised. To clarify, commoditisation is the erosion of a product from one that is highly differentiated and highly priced (with high margins) into one that isn’t.

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Are we approaching the age of digital disengagement?

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Hanna Kahlert

1 Jun 2023

Media and Marketing

Cultural trends

Digital entertainment, despite its mild correction from the lockdown-boom period, is still at record levels of engagement. More content is being created than ever before, more efficiently and cost-effectively, across games, music, and video.

min read

AI will unlock creation rather than consumption

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Mark Mulligan

25 May 2023

artificial intelligence

Unlike most new technology hype cycles, the impact of AI on the world is already surpassing expectations. The current hype around AI far exceeds that of more recent tech, such as VR, NFTs, and 3D printing.

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The new need for scarcity, and why the next big leap in entertainment has not happened yet

Cover image for The new need for scarcity, and why the next big leap in entertainment has not happened yet

Hanna Kahlert

11 May 2023

AI has dominated discourse in the entertainment industry and beyond for most of this year. As a tool it poses opportunities for some and threats for others. As a dynamic shift it will usher in a content boom that will make the previous few years of streaming dilution and attention saturation seem small by comparison.

min read

Embrace, enhance or hinder: What will AI do for you, the creator?

Cover image for Embrace, enhance or hinder: What will AI do for you, the creator?

Kriss Thakrar

3 May 2023

Creator economy

There has been an abundance of coverage and conversation around AI, and it is unlikely to fade away any time soon. There is a question of how AI will change the music industry and broader creator economy.

min read

Why AI generation might be just what music needs

Cover image for Why AI generation might be just what music needs

Tatiana Cirisano

25 Apr 2023

artificial intelligence

Music streaming

In her hit ‘Saoko’, Rosalía celebrates her multi-dimensionality, singing (translated from Spanish): “I contradict myself, I transform / I’m everything, I transform”. As artists navigate the world of AI-generated music, her words might become a mantra.

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