Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

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

Hanna Kahlert

8 Oct 2024

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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Streaming’s growth plan in the connection economy

Kriss Thakrar

18 Sep 2024

Superfans

Music streaming

Streaming clubs

During Universal’s Capital Markets Day, Universal Music Group (UMG) chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge cited some “fundamental facts” of the music business (per Music Business Worldwide ). These include the promise that “streaming will continue to propel many years of industry growth”.

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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.

Social is the new entertainment; enter MIDiA’s new social vertical

Hanna Kahlert

24 Jul 2024

Social

Audience behaviour

AI

Social platforms are now inextricable from the digital world and every aspect of entertainment. Fans and A&Rs alike discover new music on social platforms. Marketing strategies for artists and concerts are dependent on ads side-by-side with user stories.

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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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The make-or-break of live in 2024

Hanna Kahlert

9 Jul 2024

Fandom

Superfans

Digital

The music industry has a culture problem. An overabundance of data –– from streaming services and social platforms alike ––has fostered a dependence on digital performance that does not reliably translate into fandom and cultural value.

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Playable Post Malone in WWE is a cross-entertainment bullseye

Karol Severin

20 Jun 2024

post malone

WWE

cross-entertainment

Wrestling game WWE 2K24 shared an image of the playable Post Malone character this week. The rapper and producer is joining the playable roster as a part of the game’s upcoming DLC pack. Having curated the soundtrack to WWE 2K24, becoming a playable character in-game is a further continuation of his relationship with the title and serves as a great case study for cross-entertainment in-game activations.

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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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Mainstream is the new niche

Mark Mulligan

14 Jun 2024

mainstream

Niche

superstars

Five years ago, we made the call that ‘niche is the new mainstream’ . Today, this dynamic is so fundamental to music and culture that we are firmly in the stage of second order consequences. Superstars are getting smaller, the long tail is getting longer, and rightsholders are bringing in earnings thresholds to keep that growing long tail at bay.

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The state of the attention economy: why don’t fan-first platforms work?

Hanna Kahlert

5 Jun 2024

Fandom

Taylor Swift

Fans

The music industry is increasingly looking to fan-first solutions to drive its next era of growth (and solve artists’ financial woes), with all eyes towards the Taylor Swift model of fan frenzy. At the heart of this quest is a tension inherent in the ‘everything everywhere all the time’ model.

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Audience agency and the value of social media: the rise of the “digitine”

Hanna Kahlert

15 May 2024

digitine

TikTok

influencer

“Let them eat cake,” declared model and influencer Haley Kalil , dressed for the $75,000-per-ticket Met Gala in an unironically Marie Antoinette-style dress, in a viral TikTok video last weekend. Somehow, this did not go down very well among audiences on social media, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of whom are currently struggling to remain encamped in University campuses or taking to the streets in protest worldwide.

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Helldivers 2's woes show publishers should nudge, not push, gamers

Rhys Elliott

10 May 2024

playstation 5

Sony

helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is one of the most popular games of the year so far and has been PlayStation’s biggest PC and live-service success story to date. But PlayStation drew the ire of the game’s PC fanbase by announcing it would force Steam players to link their account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account.

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Music fandom’s future (and its existential crisis)

Hanna Kahlert

1 May 2024

Fandom

Taylor Swift

Streaming

The launch of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department”, broke records last week (small surprise there). Swift’s reputation for playing to her fanbase has once again proven to be in a class of its own – be it changing the fortunes of cinema chains , or altering local economies with her tour.

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Taylor Swift, The Black Dog, and the fan frenzy flywheel

Kriss Thakrar

25 Apr 2024

Fandom

Superfans

Taylor Swift

A new Taylor Swift album is almost guaranteed to start a fan frenzy - the question is, what form will it take? Breaking Spotify records is a given, but digital consumption is not enough to satiate super fandom.

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AI cannot replace creators… and the proof, surprisingly, is books

Hanna Kahlert

17 Apr 2024

Fandom

Creator economy

AI

The asset-class-ification of entertainment has tended to reduce art to content made only to ensnare views, which lends itself to generative AI uptake. However, in a digital economy increasingly looking towards fandom for solutions, this environment has not exactly fostered the development of ideas, stories, and art worth being a fan of .

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Forget TikTok trends; the scene is TikTok itself

Hanna Kahlert

4 Apr 2024

TikTok

Social

Marketing

Much of marketing today focuses on chasing the latest TikTok trend. Catching the ‘next big thing’ just as it is taking off, then watching the cultural clout dissolve as the trend disappears as quickly as it appeared, is an exhausting enterprise.

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Fan economy: expanded rights are worth $3.5 billion, now what?

Mark Mulligan

3 Apr 2024

expanded rights

Fandom

Fan economy

MIDiA recently, and exclusively, revealed that expanded rights now represent 10% of the recorded music market with revenues of $3.5 billion. These revenues, derived principally from monetising the brand of the artist (merch, sponsorships, branding, live, etc.

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Format versus context: Can a YouTuber make it on TV?

Hanna Kahlert

1 Feb 2024

Media and Marketing

Cultural trends

Fandom

YouTube star MrBeast is making recent headlines for his video upload experiment with X , and now a potential partnership with Amazon Prime Video for a new reality series. The competition to turn the popular YouTuber into an audience draw for other platforms is on –but can a star in one place, still be a star anywhere else? This would not be the first time an entertainment company has tried to convert a popular social media figure.

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Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse and the blending of fan and franchise

Hanna Kahlert

3 Jan 2024

Disney

mickey mouse

copyright

Long known for its strict intellectual property strategy, Disney is seeing one of its core characters – the 1928 version of Mickey Mouse – enter the public domain, presenting an excellent case study on how fan engagement in entertainment has evolved in today's digital age.

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Sony is tapping its core media fusion opportunity. Here is why:

Tim Mulligan

11 Oct 2023

Sony

Media Fusion

cross entertainment

In March 2023, MIDiA wrote a report on the increasing media fusion emerging between gamers and video streaming. In rebooting video fandom we argued that gamers were now both shaping and being targeted by streaming services keen to expand their reach (and revenue) across the digital entertainment landscape.

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