Cultural Trends blog by MIDiA Research

Blog: Cultural Trends

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the digital entertainment world. Check out the latest from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage - games, video, music, audio, social, or critical developments.

It’s social’s stage now: MIDiA’s 2025 predictions webinar

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Mark Mulligan

28 Nov 2024

2025 predictions

One of my favourite parts of the MIDiA year is creating the MIDiA predictions report and webinar. It is always a true team effort, with our team of analysts spending weeks brainstorming ideas, proposing...

min read

The BlueSky migration: How cultural shifts can disrupt even the most established social media platforms

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Hanna Kahlert

19 Nov 2024

Twitter clones have proliferated since Elon Musk first bought and renamed the platform to X in 2022. Despite a lot of buzz around platforms like Mastodon and BlueSky, none have seemed to capture a significant...

min read

Info-tainment, Kamala’s campaign failure, and the distortive role of social media marketing

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Hanna Kahlert

12 Nov 2024

Marketing Strategy

trump presidency

The recent US election has capped off one of the biggest global election years in recent history, and the world around us is changing rapidly. Digital life, and specifically social media platforms, play...

min read

Social platforms are eating passive entertainment. Are games eating social?

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Hanna Kahlert

22 Oct 2024

At Sony Music’s Interactive Tech Day in London on 22nd October, gaming was, ironically, the highlight. From artist takeovers of Roblox destinations to concert-type experiences in Fortnite Islands, the...

min read

AI, dead internet theory, and why analogue is a future-proof business strategy

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Hanna Kahlert

8 Oct 2024

analogue revival

The internet is abuzz over Google NotebookLM’s eerily realistic-sounding podcasts. Last week, MIDiA wrote about how it will disrupt primarily information-driven podcasting, rather than entertainment...

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AI podcasts: Google’s NotebookLM will disrupt — not destroy — podcasting

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Rutger Rosenborg

2 Oct 2024

On the heels of a North Carolina man being indicted for music streaming fraud, questions about AI and audio — especially as it pertains to intellectual property (IP) rights — continue to swirl. Now,...

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As audio goes long-form, podcasts and audiobooks converge

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Rutger Rosenborg

18 Sep 2024

Songs may be getting shorter, but many of the most popular podcasts are not. As Ashley Carman reports for Bloomberg , Lex Fridman’s August 2024 episode with Elon Musk reached almost nine hours, while...

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BlueSky benefits from X’s Brazil ban: a fragmenting social ecosystem is shaky ground for incumbents

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Hanna Kahlert

10 Sep 2024

X has long been the social platform of ‘on the pulse’ news updates and cultural happenings. Its users over-index for using social platforms to keep up with news and culture (as outlined in our social...

min read

‘Song of the summer’ may be dead, but 2024 was the summer of song

Cover image for ‘Song of the summer’ may be dead, but 2024 was the summer of song

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Aug 2024

fragmented fandom

Music Streaming

Over the past few years, MIDiA has often remarked at the lack of a “song of the summer” . There was once a singular undeniable hit each summer, one that everyone could agree on, like ‘One Dance’...

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Instagram and the download-delete cycle: a cultural shift for social platforms

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Hanna Kahlert

13 Aug 2024

analogue revival

Forget the tech-centric sci-fi future promised by the early 2000’s; the new aspiration is going offline. Analogue is the new ‘cool’, and it is not just about nostalgia. Audiences are searching for...

min read

The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

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Rutger Rosenborg

7 Aug 2024

Cultural Trends

In March, on the heels of a Danish man becoming the first person convicted of streaming fraud, MIDiA explained how AI could soon enable a golden age of audio piracy . Coupled with the fact that book publishers...

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Algorithms, AI, truth, and trust: why social platforms should be worried about the riots

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Hanna Kahlert

6 Aug 2024

Cultural Trends

Social platforms have had a rocky history with misinformation, from US election cycles to social unrest . Over time, platforms have alleged new restrictions and guidelines intended to help reduce the risks....

min read

Music isn’t getting worse, genre is

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Mark Mulligan

10 Jul 2024

A couple of weeks ago Rick Beato put out a video titled “ The real reason why music is getting worse” . The core arguments centre around too many people making music, and tech making it both easier...

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Commodification’s kickbacks: trends emerging in the pendulum swing back from content overload and AI

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Hanna Kahlert

18 Jun 2024

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the state of entertainment (and culture more broadly). AI generated content is taking up ever-larger swathes of the internet. Passive consumption drives high numbers that...

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Mainstream is the new niche

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Mark Mulligan

14 Jun 2024

Five years ago, we made the call that ‘niche is the new mainstream’ . Today, this dynamic is so fundamental to music and culture that we are firmly in the stage of second order consequences. Superstars...

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Another Fake Drake? AI is decoupling artists and their voices (and there’s no coming back)

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Hanna Kahlert

12 Jun 2024

heart on my sleeve

Drake has had perhaps one of the most publicly up-and-down relationships with generative AI. There was the AI Drake music generator, which he was dead set against. Then there was ‘Heart on My Sleeve’,...

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GTA VI will reverse console's slump and solidify gaming's role at the heart of entertainment

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Rhys Elliott

24 May 2024

take two interactive

grand theft auto vi

grand theft auto

Move aside, Barbenheimer and Taylor Swift. The decade’s defining moment in entertainment is coming. Grand Theft Auto ( GTA) VI is due to launch in autumn 2025, and it's set to be entertainment’s biggest...

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Audience agency and the value of social media: the rise of the “digitine”

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Hanna Kahlert

15 May 2024

“Let them eat cake,” declared model and influencer Haley Kalil , dressed for the $75,000-per-ticket Met Gala in an unironically Marie Antoinette-style dress, in a viral TikTok video last weekend. Somehow,...

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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...

min read

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...

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Showing 1 to 20 of 183 results.