Blog: Cultural trends - Page 3

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Kendrick vs. Drake is a rare ‘mainstream’ moment — and streaming is on the sidelines

Cover image for Kendrick vs. Drake is a rare ‘mainstream’ moment — and streaming is on the sidelines

Tatiana Cirisano

9 May 2024

Bifurcation theory

Over the last week, it has been hard to go anywhere, or speak to anyone, without some mention of the epic diss track battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. When is the last time we could say that about a pop culture moment? The domination of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is arguably the only bit of music news in the last year that managed to cut across every niche and break into “mainstream” conversation.

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We need ‘real’ artists for the return to reality

Cover image for We need ‘real’ artists for the return to reality

Kriss Thakrar

1 May 2024

The big theme of MIDiA’s 2024 predictions is that ‘ the algorithm is not listening ’. A third of the way into the year, we are seeing more and more evidence that this is the case. The past few years have seen social media feeds become hyper-personalised to the point where algorithms now know us too intimately.

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Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two

Cover image for Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two

Mark Mulligan

18 Apr 2024

Bifurcation theory

future of music

One of things we pride ourselves on at MIDiA is helping the marketplace peer over the horizon with disruptive, forward-looking ideas and vision. We have a long track record of doing this (you can find a list of report links at the bottom of this post).

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Can’t cross the moat? Walk around it

Cover image for Can’t cross the moat? Walk around it

Mark Mulligan

12 Apr 2024

Creator economy

consumer creation

The music business is bifurcating. On one side, a new AI, fandom, and creation centred business is coalescing. On the other, the traditional business is pulling the draw bridge over its moat by pushing up streaming royalty thresholds to ensure the soon-to-explode long tail knows it is not welcome.

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The cultural pendulum swing is coming back around

Cover image for The cultural pendulum swing is coming back around

Tatiana Cirisano

11 Apr 2024

Music streaming

Across culture, there is an eerie sense of things coming full circle. After spending the past decade building an industry around ad-free streaming TV, Netflix has ads and feels increasingly like cable .

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The techification of entertainment (and why it needs to reverse)

Cover image for The techification of entertainment (and why it needs to reverse)

Hanna Kahlert

10 Apr 2024

Entertainment today is almost inseparable from streaming – for better and for worse. The tech infrastructure that underpins today’s entertainment industry has had a huge impact not only on how content is delivered, but who consumes it, how, and why.

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

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

Mark Mulligan

3 Apr 2024

expanded rights

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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Reddit’s IPO is a nail in the coffin for the centralised internet

Cover image for Reddit’s IPO is a nail in the coffin for the centralised internet

Hanna Kahlert

28 Mar 2024

centralised internet

Last week, Reddit, the 19 year old social(ish) platform and long-time backbone of the internet, went up for IPO. The news is not exactly a surprise; the company has been hinting at it for years now, and initially filed in 2021 before the market turned unfavourable.

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Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change

Cover image for Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change

Hanna Kahlert

20 Mar 2024

It has never been easier to become a music artist, but it has never been harder to turn that into a long-term career. A hyper-saturated content environment means record levels of competition and decreasing shares of stable revenues.

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What would a post-TikTok (US) future look like?

Cover image for What would a post-TikTok (US) future look like?

Hanna Kahlert

14 Mar 2024

The US House of Representatives has just passed a bill, with bipartisan support, which would make TikTok break with parent company Bytedance or be banned from app stores. Based on current discourse, it looks unlikely that TikTok will comply; and unlike past legislation, it looks like this bill may have ‘ teeth ’.

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Music has a gender problem — why do women bear the burden of fixing it?

Cover image for Music has a gender problem — why do women bear the burden of fixing it?

Tatiana Cirisano

13 Mar 2024

gender equality

On International Womens’ Day, MIDiA published the fourth annual edition of BE THE CHANGE: Gender equity in music , in collaboration with TuneCore and Believe. We surveyed more than 4,100 music creators and professionals from 133 countries, as well as conducting interviews, to learn about their challenges in the industry.

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Music creators – take our survey!

Cover image for Music creators – take our survey!

Mark Mulligan

21 Feb 2024

Cultural trends

MIDiA is fielding its annual music creator survey and if you are a music creator we would like you to take part. Whether you are a songwriter, artist, producer, engineer, vocalist, DJ, instrumentalist, soundtrack composer, or whatever you may be, we want to hear from you.

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

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

Hanna Kahlert

1 Feb 2024

Media and Marketing

Cultural trends

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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One stream’s trash, another stream’s treasure – if everything’s niche, what success can you measure?

Cover image for One stream’s trash, another stream’s treasure – if everything’s niche, what success can you measure?

Hanna Kahlert

24 Jan 2024

At this point, we are all on the same page, or at least should be, that ‘niche is the new mainstream’. Thanks to the (sometimes brutal) accuracy of social algorithms, pretty much any artist can find their ideal fans, no matter where they are in the world.

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Instagram is becoming Facebook. So where do all the people go?

Cover image for Instagram is becoming Facebook. So where do all the people go?

Hanna Kahlert

18 Jan 2024

Facebook is the most used social media platform in Western markets (not including YouTube, which may host user-generated content but is not typically considered in the same category). Yet, the broad consensus, from competitors to Gen Z, is that the platform is ‘dead’.

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Are we approaching an analogue revival?

Cover image for Are we approaching an analogue revival?

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.

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

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

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)

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

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

Cover image for MIDiA’s 2024 predictions: The algorithm is not listening

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?

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

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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