Hanna Kahlert

Streaming is killing culture? Tell that to the Sea Shanty

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

26 Jan 2021

Being a music artist is no easy feat these days. Labels are struggling to cut through the clutter of content proliferation, pushing artists to shorten songs, forgo the album, and prioritise playlist placements…

Is this the beginning of the end for Instagram?

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

19 Jan 2021

It has been a rocky month for social media – and a not-so-promising beginning to a new year. Years of debate have raged over the role of platforms like Facebook and Twitter in the content they host,…

Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars: The role of imperfection in the fandom formula

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

13 Jan 2021

The much-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 was released last month on December 10th, as both the most expensive game ever made and with one of the most high-profile acting casts. Following the studio’s highly-successful…

The live versus streaming demographic paradox

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

5 Jan 2021

As we begin 2021 with a vaccine on the near horizon, live venue businesses are holding on with whitening knuckles through the intermediate stricter lockdowns. However, the world has changed much in the…

Facebook faces anti-trust lawsuits, sounding a warning to big tech

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

16 Dec 2020

Last Wednesday, 48 US State attorneys general and the US Federal Trade Commission filed lawsuits against Facebook, echoing the hearings before Congress earlier this year in declaring that the company’s…

Cultural Trends in 2021
Navigating a New Normal

Report by Hanna Kahlert

10 Dec 2020

£3,000.00

Behaviours under coronavirus-driven lockdowns accelerated underlying digital consumption trends. Remote working and ongoing restrictions mean streaming behaviour is up across formats and demographics…

Cultural moments of audio, from Amazon and Wondery to Spotify Wrapped

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

7 Dec 2020

As MIDiA has discussed often in the past , we are moving from a music-only audio space to one of broader audio. Driving this are podcasts, which have become the primary new format drawing upon latent demand…

Netflix brings chess back to the mainstream with Queen’s Gambit power move

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

30 Nov 2020

When Netflix aired its chess-themed TV series The Queen’s Gambit on October 23rd, the choice of topic seemed a quizzically niche one. Chess has not seen mainstream enthusiasm since Cold-War-era face-offs…

Social media propositions are competing by homogenising?

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

24 Nov 2020

‘Tis the season for new social media layouts, it seems. Recently, Instagram has introduced a new layout featuring a combined Reels/Stories tab and a shopping tab; Twitter has rolled out its own form…

2021 Predictions
The Year of the Immersive Web

Report by Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan, Karol Severin, Alistair Taylor and Hanna Kahlert

23 Nov 2020

£5,000.00

In this report MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech across music, video, brands, marketing, games and sports in 2021 and beyond.…

Virtual Reality: The flying cars of the 21st century

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

16 Nov 2020

Virtual reality – or “VR” – has been described as a potentially media transforming technology for years now . Desperate trend seekers have long harked its “potential”, certain that this little-understood,…

Among Us: What brands can learn from gamer communities

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

2 Nov 2020

Last Tuesday, 27 October, a new record was set for the third-largest games stream in Twitch history , with an audience of between 300,000 and 400,000 over three and a half hours. It was not driven by a…

Quibi’s failure is a warning to those who do not seek to understand audiences

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

27 Oct 2020

Quibi launched six months ago, grabbing onto the coattails of short-form content and announcing it would bring “big stories” in “small bites”. Studio executives were curious to see if, indeed,…

Live streaming and the role of music artist empowerment in the digital era

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

19 Oct 2020

As the coronavirus lockdowns have forced venues to close and people indoors, artists have been unevenly impacted across the music industry. While many bigger studios were forced to cease operations,…

From blockbuster-breaker to niche premium experience – cinema gets a makeover

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

12 Oct 2020

Lockdown has been catastrophic for live entertainment, forcing the closure of venues from movie theatres to concert halls to local music stages. This has forced creators and venues alike to adapt their…

Developers versus distributors: The App and Play Stores see challenge on the horizon

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

7 Oct 2020

Six months ago, Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store were the unquestioned gateways between app developers and consumer devices. Today, the unshakeable foundations of the fortress walls are,…

Big tech is on the spot as the lines between commercial and political begin to blur

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

28 Sep 2020

Two months ago, on July 30th, the CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon testified before US congress in a hearing largely focusing on the implications of antitrust law in their business operations.…

Oracle and Walmart re-emerge to take on the future of a US TikTok

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

22 Sep 2020

Since the announced US ban of ByteDance and WeChat in August, the future of the widely popular short-form social video app TikTok has been murky and vaguely chaotic. Two weeks ago, Microsoft and Walmart…

Zombies and vaporwave: Consumer vibes in 2020

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

12 Sep 2020

News has become culturally vital in 2020. In a year of global health, social and economic disruption, it now possesses a relevant edge to compete vigorously for consumer attention in a saturated content…

Post-Pandemic Programming
Surviving and Thriving in the Recession

Cover image for Post-Pandemic Programming

Report by Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan, Karol Severin, Alistair Taylor, Keith Jopling and Hanna Kahlert

9 Sep 2020

£5,000.00

COVID-19 caused dislocation and disruption to the global entertainment business. Now, the recession and the prospect of further pandemic peaks have created an unprecedented outlook for entertainment…