cultural insight blog by MIDiA Research

Blog: cultural insight

What Gamescom and PAX West tell us about games’ cultural relevance in the 2020s

Blog post by Karol Severin

15 Sep 2022

Over the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to present at both Gamescom in Cologne, and PAX West in Seattle. It has been a few years since I visited Gamescom. Back then, I wrote about how gaming has...

Quick take: Gunna’s triumph over The Weeknd is all about moving the culture

Blog post by Tatiana Cirisano

20 Jan 2022

Marketing

Music

Media and Marketing

For the past week, hip-hop Twitter was buzzing with debate. The Weeknd and Gunna both released surprise albums on 7th January: Dawn FM and DS4EVER , respectively. So, whose album would come out...

Why music underpins the culture of our ‘new normal’

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

22 Jul 2021

Music

Media and Marketing

audience insight

The recent UK DCMS committee findings on streaming – namely, that artists should receive a greater share of streaming revenues – is merely one facet of the growing pains of a music industry reshaped...

To the moon: The GameStop stock story reveals a dynamic shift in consumption culture

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

3 Feb 2021

Media and Marketing

content consumption

consumer trends

“Mortgage-backed securities, sub-prime loans, tranches… It’s pretty confusing right? Does it make you feel bored, or stupid? Well, it’s supposed to. Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to...

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

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

22 Sep 2020

Mobile content

Online video

TikTok

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

Vapourware

synth wave

lofi

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...

How games continue to drive a cultural shift

Blog post by Karol Severin

24 Jul 2020

Games

gaming

cultural insight

The strides gaming has made in recent years regarding its cultural relevance are hard to ignore. Twenty years ago, consumers defined their cultural image through the music they listened to, the clothes...

Seven Developments in Recorded Music in the 2010s (and the Songs that Defined them)

Blog post by Zach Fuller

6 Nov 2019

cardi b

cultural insight

Drake

Decade retrospectives are almost doomed to fail. Assess the 60s in 1969 and you would have likely overweighed the influence of Grand Funk Railroad compared to The Velvet Underground. When it comes to the...

Streaming Needs to Worry About a Global Recession…But Perhaps Not as Much as Cable

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

27 Aug 2019

cultural insight

Media

streaming

Last week MIDiA’s Mark Mulligan overviewed how , in a recession, discretionary expenditures are the first to be cut. Given the non-obligatory nature of subscriptions and the contractual shackles of cable,...

Sports, Television, Music, Politics – Cultural Cohesion in a Climate of Division

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

8 Aug 2019

cultural insight

entertainment

Media

History (so they say) repeats itself. While in some instances this might bring about the comfort of cyclical certainty, in others – as we near a new roaring 20’s with what looks to be thematic similarity...