Blog: US

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.

Can the smart TV become a canvas for content creation?

Cover image for Can the smart TV become a canvas for content creation?

Ben Woods

21 Feb 2025

Audience Insight

YouTube’s growing strength on smart TVs is a head scratching moment for the video industry. The social video platform recently revealed that US consumers watched 1 billion hours of YouTube content daily...

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What the Reuters AI copyright decision means for the music industry

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Tatiana Cirisano

20 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Last week saw a major AI copyright case judgement in the US – and it fell in favour of human creators. The case stems all the way back to 2020, when Thomson Reuters sued the legal AI startup ROSS Intelligence,...

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The audio listener is too valuable for the music industry to ignore

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Rutger Rosenborg

13 Feb 2025

On the heels of positive Q4 2024 financials for Spotify , the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has not lost a step in holding the company accountable for what it sees as unauthorised music...

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How PlayStation broke its hardware and active user records in Q4

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Rhys Elliott

13 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Sony released its financial results for calendar Q4 2024. Here are the high-level results: Sony generated revenues of $27.9 billion As always, its Game & Network Services (G&NS) Segment – PlayStation...

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Bringing fandom to life: the rise of IRL superfan experiences

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Olivia Jones

12 Feb 2025

Much of the recent discussion around music superfan monetisation has focused on online superfans, especially as more superstars join fan platforms like Weverse. These monetisation strategies capitalise...

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Bootlegging is the scourge of many industries. Could it be music’s greatest strength?

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Tatiana Cirisano

7 Feb 2025

The word “bootleg” has long left a bad taste in brands’ mouths. Quite literally defined as “illicit goods,” these unauthorised versions or replications of clothes, handbags, concert tees, and...

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The case for anti-scale

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Tatiana Cirisano

30 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Go big or go home. More is more. All or nothing. Move fast and break things. Such adages have been the foundations of Western entertainment business for decades, and understandably so, because these models...

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The unflattening of music

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Mark Mulligan

30 Jan 2025

Cultural trends

[This post builds on two other recent MIDiA posts: Background music and What got you here ] At the half way point of the decade it is a good time to reflect on how the business of music is reshaping the...

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Jersey club in Berlin | Behind the scenes and sounds of 2025

Cover image for Jersey club in Berlin | Behind the scenes and sounds of 2025

Kriss Thakrar

29 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for...

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DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

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Hanna Kahlert

29 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

The AI race is a tense one. Billions of dollars have been poured into the likes of OpenAI. Meanwhile, the US and UK governments, among others, have pledged to invest heavily in AI development, suggesting...

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Sounds of 2025 | MIDiA and Splice name Pluggnb music’s fastest-growing genre

Cover image for Sounds of 2025 | MIDiA and Splice name Pluggnb music’s fastest-growing genre

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for...

min read

Ban or no ban, what comes next for TikTok creators?

Cover image for Ban or no ban, what comes next for TikTok creators?

Hanna Kahlert

22 Jan 2025

Marketing Strategy

The TikTok ban saga continues. The official date of the ban saw the app go dark in the US and Canada, replaced by a notice that the law had come into effect. However, only a few hours later, the app came...

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The podcast listener journey reveals a desire for human connection

Cover image for The podcast listener journey reveals a desire for human connection

Rutger Rosenborg

21 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

As the global podcast industry zeros in on video – especially social video – one overlooked discovery source has never really gone away: word of mouth. Despite a format that was born to be digital,...

min read

What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Cover image for What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Mark Mulligan

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Since its inception, Spotify has been, and continues to be, the streaming music market’s lightning rod. This is due to its continued ability to maintain leading market share and the fact it is the only...

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Why social media regulation could be a boost for the creator economy

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Hanna Kahlert

26 Nov 2024

TikTok’s future hangs in the balance, with its January deadline to find a new owner fast approaching beneath the oversight of a new, and unpredictable, US administration. President Trump originally tried...

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Welcome to the world of digital autarky

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Tim Mulligan

8 Jul 2020

2020 has thus far proved to be a year of unexpected disruption across business and the geo-political landscape as the international order adapts to the global pandemics and rising nationalism.The post...

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US Cord Cutting Full-Year 2018: Transition Uptake

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Hanna Kahlert

30 Apr 2019

This article is derived from MIDiA’s US Cord Cutting Full Year 2018 report. Cord cutting is now an established part of the US pay-TV landscape, illustrating the impact of streaming video on demand (SVOD)...

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Amazon is all in on advertising

Alistair Taylor

31 Aug 2018

ad supported streaming

advertising video on demand

Amazon’s latest play into the TV ad market with the launch of Free Dive, an ad-supported video service for Fire TV users, showcases the company’s intent to further diversify revenue streams from its...

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MIDiA Chart Of The Week: The Steady Decline Of The CD Buyer

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Mark Mulligan

8 Feb 2016

Chart Of The Week

As much as we may be in the era of streaming, nearly half of recorded music revenue globally is still derived from physical sales, with the CD making up the vast majority of that. So, for all the understandable...

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MIDiA Data Point Of The Day: US Video Users

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Mark Mulligan

27 Nov 2015

Data Point Of The Day

There are 169 million online video users in the US. Online video use has now become a mainstream US consumer activity over half of the US population now watching online. Broadband connectivty, technology...

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