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YouTube, AI, and the social content balancing act

Ben Woods

16 Jul 2025

How are social platforms coping as the AI floodgates open? For some time now, MIDiA has been advocating for social platforms to provide some protections to human creators from the increase in AI content.

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The new Hollywood
Tactics for YouTube’s TV takeover

Ben Woods

26 Aug 2025

Creators Streaming YouTube

YouTube is consolidating its takeover of the living room TV set. What began in the US is now becoming a global phenomenon. With younger audiences increasingly spending more time watching social video on the TV, broadcasters and streaming TV services must find a way to respond.

YouTube is winning emerging markets by being social – and format-flexible

Hanna Kahlert

5 Mar 2025

Audience Insight Cultural trends YouTube

In English-speaking markets (and much of Europe), entertainment consumption is split across a large number of digital platforms, segmented largely by content format, rights access, and legacy uptake. It is also fragmented across devices: smart TVs, smartphones, laptops, and consoles all play big rol...

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Karra, bifurcation, and YouTube’s gain

Mark Mulligan

8 Sep 2025

Product Strategy Streaming Music

A couple of weeks ago, electronic music artist Karra posted a video on YouTube about why she took her album down from streaming (one that she spent $100,000 making). She is now going to focus her efforts on YouTube (“an incredible platform for [her] artistry”), as well as selling content to musi...

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The BBC, Channel 4, and the risk of giving too much to YouTube

Ben Woods

26 Mar 2025

Business Strategy YouTube Netflix

Key insights from this blog: As YouTube has skyrocketed in popularity, it has become an unexpected challenge for the UK's public service broadcasters These broadcasters are also facing challenges from streaming services, which can afford bigger budget productions and big-name talent MIDiA explores h...

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Why comments on Spotify podcasts are more about YouTube than community

Rutger Rosenborg

17 Jul 2024

Spotify YouTube youtube podcasts

In September 2021, Spotify launched the Q&A and polls features for podcasts on the platform. The impetus, according to Spotify’s For the Record blog, was to make podcasts more of a two-way street and “community-building medium.

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YouTubers want greater government support – and British broadcasters could help

Ben Woods

8 Jul 2025

Business Strategy YouTube Creator economy

Governments often struggle to keep pace with technological change. This can be frustrating for young but growing industries that need ministerial support to unlock the next stages of their economic potential.

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Why Disney’s Epic Games investment challenges YouTube

Ben Woods

9 Feb 2024

YouTube Disney Epic Games

YouTube’s chief executive, Neil Mohan's, latest open letter was full of confidence . A little over a week since YouTube recorded a 16% jump in advertising revenue to $9.2 billion for Q4 2023 , he outlined four big bets to advance the business this year.

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Is embracing RSS a smart move for YouTube?

Rutger Rosenborg

15 Feb 2024

Audio Podcasts rss

2023 saw YouTube bring podcasts to YouTube Music, but it did so without one of the podcast industry’s fundamental building blocks: RSS. However, just months later, YouTube has announced in a video posted to their Creator Insider channel that they are opening up RSS feed distribution.

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Could YouTube be the music-first social platform the industry needs?

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Feb 2024

music video TikTok YouTube

In December, we mused on what could happen if artists collectively stepped off the content treadmill. With Universal Music Group (UMG) removing its catalogue from TikTok, that thought experiment came startlingly close to fruition.

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YouTube meets a new era with DreamTrack and music video remixing

Tatiana Cirisano

30 Apr 2024

YouTube Business Strategy

YouTube revolutionised the music video space: first by enabling global, on-demand music video consumption, and second by empowering consumers to share their own videos with the world. Nearly two decades later, the latter innovation has arguably proven more impactful than the former.

Goodbye Google Podcasts: What’s next for YouTube Music?

Annie Langston

5 Oct 2023

YouTube YouTube Music Podcasts

YouTube’s podcast bet just got bigger. Last week, Google announced that its standalone podcast app, Google Podcasts, will shut down in 2024. Since YouTube’s official podcast launch , this strategy was expected , as Google Podcasts began rolling back some of its podcast features while YouTube Mus...

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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, stil...

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Features versus fandom: Why TikTok is trying to become more like YouTube

Hanna Kahlert

4 Dec 2023

TikTok YouTube Strategy

TikTok’s emergence in Western markets shook the entire social media landscape, by reintroducing what Vine had done over a decade earlier: short-form video. The snappy, to-the-punchline clips were easy to make, easy to share, and easy to consume in a hyper-tailored feed that knew what users wanted ...

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Why YouTube should disrupt streaming TV’s love affair with TikTok

Ben Woods

28 Sep 2023

YouTube Shorts TikTok south park

It has become a tried and tested tactic for streaming TV services: Take the exclusive show you want to promote, drop the first episode on social media for free, and hope it motivates audiences enough to buy a subscription to your service.

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