scenes

Scenes 2.0 | MIDiA’s updated entertainment playbook

Tatiana Cirisano

6 Mar 2025

Fandom Music Artists

In 2022, MIDiA introduced scenes as a new playbook for music marketing . As entertainment consumption fragments, what was once a singular “mainstream” is being replaced by hundreds of thousands of smaller scenes, or subcultures – like gorpcore, hyperpop fans, or retro gamers.

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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 and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

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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 – is booming.

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Cover image for Leveraging anime

Leveraging anime
A nuanced scene not a genre

Ben Woods

30 Apr 2025

Netflix Content Entertainment

Engaging younger audiences remains the entertainment industry’s biggest challenge. However, Japanese anime is achieving this by growing penetration with each new generation of consumers. Key to this success is its ability to dovetail with the fragmented nature of modern entertainment consumption to reach consumers in their scenes.

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Scenes are the new markets
Why and how entertainment should go niche

Tatiana Cirisano

6 Mar 2025

Marketing monetisation Entertainment

In 2022, MIDiA introduced scenes as a new lens for marketing music. This report expands on the concept, reintroducing scenes – groups of people whose shared interests, aesthetics, values, behaviours, and vernacular have coalesced into a shared lifestyle – as a wider business strategy reset for all of entertainment.

Why podcasts triumph in real-life settings: a lesson in scene alignment

Laura Fisher

10 Jul 2025

Fandom Podcasts Audio

Podcasts are well and truly getting the in-real-life treatment. What began as a digitally native on-demand medium is now commanding physical spaces with remarkable success. This isn’t from the live recordings in and of themselves, but from mastering scene alignment .

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Cover image for Social as the home of online scenes

Social as the home of online scenes
Going beyond viral moments

Hanna Kahlert

14 Aug 2025

Creators Creators France

In a fragmented digital environment, scenes are becoming important tools for connecting with and mobilising fans. Social platforms can be useful for finding, understanding, and engaging with scenes. However, not all social moments are created equal. This report reveals how social is only part of the bigger picture, and dives deep to show that the c...

Cover image for Niche is mainstream

Niche is mainstream
How scenes, niche aggregators, and creators will reshape entertainment

Hanna Kahlert

25 Apr 2024

Audience Insight

As niche officially becomes mainstream, the entertainment industry faces a delicate balance. Audiences are losing interest in broad, mainstream propositions, but hyper-personalised niches are inherently difficult to scale and monetise while retaining what made them special to fans in the first place.

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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Cover image for How Crunchyroll became a driver of anime’s fandom and scenes

How Crunchyroll became a driver of anime’s fandom and scenes

Ben Woods

30 Apr 2025

Streaming US free

Crunchyroll is not a traditional streaming TV service. It is a fandom hub, with engagement touch points that encourage viewers to deepen their fandom. By providing ways to watch, play, listen, spend money, consume news, and participate in live events, Crunchyroll puts anime fans on a pathway to superfandom.

Identity and culture have killed genre in a scenes-driven industry

Kriss Thakrar

31 Oct 2023

Scenes jazz TikTok

This year has seen a renaissance for jazz in popular culture, with artists like Laufey, DOMi and JD Beck, and Ezra Collective succeeding on commercial and critical levels. However, their successes also demonstrate one of the key dynamics driving the modern music industry: identity and culture are mo...

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Cover image for How Charli XCX leveraged the hyperpop scene into a global movement

How Charli XCX leveraged the hyperpop scene into a global movement

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

10 Apr 2025

Labels Streaming US

Hyperpop music emerged in the 2010s, led by producer A.G. Cook, his record label PC Music, and its particular style of exaggerated, self-referential pop. From the start, though, hyperpop was always more than a music genre. It was catalysed by backlash to consumerism and late-stage capitalism, which shaped everything from the sound of the music to t...

Anti-algorithm, anti-perfection - the rise of a music counter-culture

Mark Mulligan

20 Dec 2024

SoundCloud Scenes Music

Today’s music landscape is one defined by abundance and immediacy. In today’s chronically-online world, everything is over-ground, immediately. Scenes have to work really hard to be underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or marketing person is going to see the buzz and try to bottle its ...

Global Music Subscription Market Sees Growth, Led by Emerging Markets

Tsion Tadesse

8 Feb 2024

Music

[London - 8th February, 2024] - MIDiA Research, a leading research and insights firm, has unveiled its highly anticipated Music Subscriber Market Shares Q3 2023 report. This comprehensive analysis showcases the remarkable expansion of the global music subscription market, driven primarily by emergin...

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Making sense of global music forecasts

Mark Mulligan

20 Jul 2023

music forecasts streaming music forecasts streamign music revenues

MIDiA has been building global music forecasts for nearly a decade now, and I personally have been building them for nearly two decades. Throughout those years there have been many calls for the numbers to be bigger and bolder.

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The life of a cultural narrative: Where are 2025’s iconic moments?

Hanna Kahlert

26 Aug 2025

Cultural trends Entertainment Media

Eras are defined by their moments. The 2000’s saw low-rise jeans, a neon palette, and pop star drama. The 2010’s had barn weddings and ‘Gangnam Style’. With time comes the benefit of hindsight, and clarity on what was big versus what faded quickly.

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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 spaces and regional scenes.

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More than a lineup: The importance of bold curation

Laura Fisher

14 Aug 2025

Business Strategy Music Artists

Have you noticed how many festival lineups this summer feature the same handful of artists? I have, and, crucially, fans are noticing it too. Where festival billings once offered a window into a distinctive scene, today’s lineups are merging into a wave of homogenised big-name experiences.

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Music discovery is not dead, just evolving – the industry needs to evolve with it

Olivia Jones

9 May 2025

Audience Insight Music streaming Social media

Music streaming algorithms have changed the way we listen to music – for better and for worse. While the radio used to be the main way to find new music, streaming and social algorithms now drive discovery as listeners crave (and have come to expect) more personalised recommendations.

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International success for local language artists
A strategic playbook

Laura Fisher

24 Jun 2025

UK France Spotify

The music industry is undergoing a paradigm shift. Success once required artists to fit the traditional industry model where anglicisation and relocation to traditional hubs like Los Angeles, New York, or London were prerequisites. Streaming platforms have democratised access, enabling artists to achieve international fame while remaining culturall...

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