Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

What Elon's Twitter means for music

29 Nov 2022

When we wrote about Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter back in April, the idea that it would actually happen seemed far-fetched. Now, of course, Musk really is in charge, and the fate of the social platform,...

min read

A field of all levels
Strategizing music’s attention economy

Tatiana Cirisano

November 2022

Consumer behaviour

Music creators

Record labels

Over roughly the past decade, each stage in the evolution of the attention economy accelerated the pace of fragmentation and oversaturation in music, unearthing new challenges for each micro-generation...

Meghan Trainor vs. Sam Smith: Newsflash, authentic(ish) marketing is ‘in’

Ashleigh Millar

2 Nov 2022

Music

Media and Marketing

Meghan Trainor

If you have found yourself of TikTok over the last month, you will have most likely been inundated with Sam Smith ‘Unholy’ and Meghan Trainor ‘Made You Look’ content. The two artists made TikTok...

min read

Social media marketing is becoming its own cultural moment

Hanna Kahlert and Ashleigh Millar

October 2022

Spotify

YouTube

Facebook

Audiences are changing the ways they interact with entertainment, as well as how they respond to advertising and marketing designed to promote it. Audiences are increasingly creative and engage in lean-through...

Midnights: modern-day music marketing 101

Ashleigh Millar

27 Oct 2022

Taylor Swift

Community

online communities

Are we surprised that Taylor Swift has broken records (yet again) after dropping her new album, Midnights (and Midnights (3am Edition) )? In the first five days of release, Midnights earned more than an...

min read

User-centric versus feature-centric: the future of social platforms

Hanna Kahlert

12 Oct 2022

Vinyl now matters more to the music industry

Keith Jopling

11 Oct 2022

Spotify

Streaming Music

Music

It is the final quarter of 2022 and almost time for Spotify Wrapped – that thrilling rush of data that knows more about your music listening habits than you do yourself. However, my Wrapped will be redundant...

min read

Time to jump off the algorithm highway

Mark Mulligan

30 Sep 2022

Music

Cultural trends

Marketing Strategy

Life is perpetual change, so it is perhaps overdoing it to suggest that the music business is at a cultural pivot point. Yet, what comes next has the potential to be looked at, years from now, as a dividing...

min read

Grand Theft IP

Perry Gresham

23 Sep 2022

grand theft auto

leak

intellectual property

This week gaming entered leak season, with large amounts of content unexpectedly released for two major upcoming titles: Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA) and Diablo IV. GTA developer Rockstar Games confirmed...

min read

WMG is moving beyond superstars – and that is a good thing

Mark Mulligan

16 Sep 2022

Fandom

fragmented fandom

Streaming

Warner Music Group’s ( WMG’s) Steve Cooper recently stated that the major is no longer financially dependent on superstars – which is, of course, quite a different thing from not being culturally...

min read

The future of marketing and A&R is all about scenes

Tatiana Cirisano

15 Sep 2022

music industry

Music streaming

fragmented fandom

Today’s era of hyper-fragmentation raises all sorts of questions for the music industry, in particular marketing and A&R departments. In a landscape where it is harder than ever to have a mainstream...

min read

Games-video crossovers are coming of age

Samuel Griffin

8 Sep 2022

games video

Entertainment

Music discovery

Video and games crossover content is becoming mainstream. The Emmy winning Arcane, a live action remake of The Last of Us, indicated that games-inspired video is trailblazing at the core of entertainment...

min read

Music is not a level playing field — it is a field of all levels

Tatiana Cirisano

18 Aug 2022

Music streaming

Music fandom

fragmented fandom

We have heard it (and said it) many times before: the music industry has never been as competitive as it is today. But the challenge is not just that today’s landscape is ultra-competitive, it is also...

min read

Netflix versus AMC – a tale of two fandoms

Tim Mulligan

11 Aug 2022

Bridgerton

lean through

lean in

The last two weeks have witnessed two contrasting approaches toward the increasingly fragmented world of show fandom. First of all, it was revealed that Netflix has taken legal action against Abigail Barlow...

min read

From 8-bit to fantasy: Proms’ focus on gaming underscores its cultural relevance

Samuel Griffin

10 Aug 2022

Proms

Gaming

Fandom

After the humble beginnings of the first melodic loops from NAMCO’s Rally X , the cultural symphony of music, video, and games has since matured toHildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater’s recent score...

min read

What happens when every platform has different top artists? Hint: it may be a good thing

Tatiana Cirisano

10 Aug 2022

fragmented fandom

Consumer behaviour

music marketing

Fragmentation is on full display in Chartmetric’s H1 2022 trends report , which lists the top 10 “breakthrough artists” between January and June for each of eight different platforms. It is immediately...

min read

Are ‘picture-perfect’ games marketing campaigns detrimental to building continued engagement?

Karol Severin

1 Aug 2022

Stray

games marketing

Games

Last week, my social media feeds were taken over by the release of Stray (the ‘cat game’) trying to grab my attention. I suppose that this was to be expected – I’m a cat-owning games analyst after...

min read

Spotify shines RADAR spotlight on podcast creators

Annie Langston

6 Jul 2022

Discovery

Podcasts

RADAR

Discoverability remains a core challenge for podcast creators in the audio market. We previously discussed the responsibility of audience platforms to amplify independent voices, with editorial spaces...

min read

The Kate Bush resurgence shows that music consumption has no time stamp

Keith Jopling

13 Jun 2022

Strategy

Spotify

Streaming

There are not many good news stories at the moment. It has brightened up my summer a little, though, to see music legend Kate Bush (or ‘our Kate’ if you happen to be British) acknowledge that her song,...

min read

Burning out and fading away: the exhausting job of marketing new music

Keith Jopling

31 May 2022

Streaming

Marketing

Online video

The recent protests by music artists about the pressures of keeping up a constant presence on social media are disconcerting in an age when many artists are struggling with mental health issues and wellbeing....

min read