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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.

The Boiler Room reckoning: Why scapegoating won’t fix live music’s funding problem

Laura Fisher

24 Mar 2026

Cultural trends Music live

There has been a lot of scrutiny recently about how dance music is funded. Two cases in point illustrate why. Boiler Room, the influential livestreaming platform, was acquired by DICE in 2021, then sold to Superstruct, a private equity-backed entity, in January 2025.

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The new rules of music’s growth engine: Insights from MIDiA’s merch and ticket buyer survey

Tatiana Cirisano

19 Mar 2026

Fandom Artists Music

Expanded rights are quickly becoming the growth engine of the recorded music industry. The category – which includes labels’ participation in revenue streams like merch and live – grew an impressive 21.

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The dos and don’ts of community: What digital entertainment can learn from the live sector

Hanna Kahlert

18 Mar 2026

Cultural trends Social media Content

Social media has fundamentally changed – and the consequences matter whether you’re a consumer, a content creator, a regulator, or a marketer. Here’s why: 1. Social platforms are now passive entertainment Content creation remains a niche activity, and simply posting for friends has become less...

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Global recorded music revenues up 9.4% in 2025

Mark Mulligan

13 Mar 2026

Business Strategy Fandom Recorded music

2025 was a good year for the recorded music business. After a modestly performing 2024, revenues grew by 9.4% in 2025 to reach $39.5 billion. See MIDiA’s Recorded music market 2025 | Rise of the fan economy and accompanying 12 sheet dataset for MUCH more detail.

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Attention versus fandom: Why entertainment needs a new framework for understanding engagement

Ben Woods

11 Mar 2026

Fandom Creators Video

The attention economy has become the de facto framework for measuring loyalty in the entertainment industry. However, not all attention is equal. While an hour spent scrolling videos on TikTok may compete with an hour spent playing a £70 video game, the depth, value and quality of that engagement a...

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What history really tells us about AI’s potential

Mark Mulligan

5 Mar 2026

Cultural trends Creators Innovation

History is being used to argue both for and against AI, with citations of previous cultural events and practices as evidence. Unfortunately, however, most of the historical references used are just plain wrong.

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The Sidemen formula: Why TV formats belong on creator channels

Ben Woods

25 Feb 2026

Business Strategy Streaming Creators

Broadcasters and streamers keep asking how to work more closely with creators. Their standard approach is to commission a creator-led show, cast them in a film, or license their back catalogue for a streaming service.

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From destination to departure point: Legacy IP as a gateway

Laura Fisher

24 Feb 2026

Marketing Strategy Engagement Entertainment

Whether it be the 1940 film, the 1995 television series, the 2005 film, or the recently announced 2026 Netflix series – each generation has its own Mr. Darcy. While this pattern endures, the relationship between intellectual property and audience attitudes is changing.

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The Chicken Nugget Theory of AI music consumption

Adham Nazir

19 Feb 2026

Cultural trends Music consumer

Wisdom about human nature often presents itself as guidance from an elder sage. Every now and again, though, it comes in the form of chicken nuggets. Amidst the arguments about the extent to which generative AI in music is morally, creatively, or legally just, the music industry risks forgetting som...

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From quip to category: What the Golden Globes signifies for podcasting's future

Laura Fisher

17 Feb 2026

Cultural trends Podcasts Entertainment

There was a time, not so very long ago, when mentioning you worked in podcasting required a somewhat defensive preamble about what podcasting actually is. There is a TikTok trend circulating that goes something like this: if you cannot explain your job to a five-year-old or your grandmother, it does...

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AI is booming for social platforms – but so is regulation

Hanna Kahlert

12 Feb 2026

Social media Social Games

As 2025’s Q4 numbers hit the headlines, social platforms seem to be thriving. Google recently announced YouTube’s revenues, totalling $60 billion (per the BBC ) – surpassing Netflix’s $45 billion (a bigger difference than it seems, as YouTube doesn’t have to take bets commissioning multi-m...

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The music industry’s boiling frog moment

Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2026

Business Strategy Streaming Social media

Throw a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will instantly jump out, terrified (and very hot). But put it in a pot of cool water and slowly increase the heat to boiling and it will stay there until it dies.

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The problem with the “AI versus human” music narrative

Tatiana Cirisano

5 Feb 2026

Cultural trends Streaming Music

While attending the NAMM conference and Grammys week events over the last fortnight, AI was, of course, a dominant topic. AI-assisted gadgets shared space with traditional physical instruments at NAMM; at the Grammys, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason reaffirmed that “ only human creators ” are...

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The 2026 Grammys and Bad Bunny’s cementation of the local language era

Laura Fisher

4 Feb 2026

Cultural trends Music Artists

The 68th Grammy Awards offered no shortage of significant moments, but perhaps none carried more cultural weight than when Bad Bunny’s seminal Debí Tirar Más Fotos made history. It’s crowning as Album of the Year – a first for a predominantly Spanish-language release – reflects a profound,...

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The problem with content

Mark Mulligan

3 Feb 2026

Business Strategy Creators Entertainment

Everything these days is content – but the word is as problematic as the implication. ‘Content’ is defined by other . It is defined by filling something else, being part of something else. It is something that only exists within another context.

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Why the music industry needs to learn to live with AI

Mark Mulligan

29 Jan 2026

Cultural trends Consumer behaviour Music

If life is a party, AI gate crashed it in 2025. With financial losses rising even more quickly than critical voices, AI will not find things quite so easy in 2026. You don’t have to look very far to find alarm bells being rung.

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From fans to superfans | What’s missing from the games industry

Brandon Sutton

27 Jan 2026

Business Strategy Audience Insight Gaming

The games industry is experiencing a moment of turbulence. A growing list of high-profile, high-budget titles, such as Mindseye and New World , have failed to meet commercial expectations. Increasingly, even investments in the hundreds of millions are no longer enough to guarantee a successful title.

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TikTok US is here: can Oracle run a social platform?

Hanna Kahlert

27 Jan 2026

Product Strategy TikTok Social media

The uncertain future of US TikTok has been pending for so long that updates have started to feel like ‘crying wolf’. But now, at last, a deal has been reached. Changes to the platform should be minor (although technical issues reported by CMU have raised alarm bells), but there could be a bigger...

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Indie labels are trading quantity for quality as they let go of the “volume game”: MIDiA’s latest label survey

Olivia Jones

22 Jan 2026

Business Strategy Music Artists

In MIDiA’s third annual independent label and distributor survey, “less is more” is the name of the game. Drawing from a survey of 144 labels and distributors that self-identify as independent, MIDiA’s latest report explores how the indie sphere is adapting to the rapidly-changing industry l...

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TikTok’s PineDrama points to social media’s anti-social trajectory

Hanna Kahlert

20 Jan 2026

Business Strategy TikTok Video

The surge of short-form drama apps has a new entry in the US and Brazil: TikTok. The social video app, which has overturned the digital entertainment economy over the past five years, has now launched a standalone app called PineDrama.

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