MIDiA Blog

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 podcast attention game: How algorithmic discovery may remake podcasting

Cover image for The podcast attention game: How algorithmic discovery may remake podcasting

Rutger Rosenborg

29 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Open the YouTube app on your TV and the first category you will see below “Home” is “Podcasts”. According to the YouTube blog , viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts every month in 2024, just on living room devices alone.

4 min read

DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

Cover image for DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

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 that they feel it is of critical importance to “win” the new space race.

4 min read

Switch 2 FAQs: Your cheat sheet for understanding Nintendo's upcoming console

Cover image for Switch 2 FAQs: Your cheat sheet for understanding Nintendo's upcoming console

Rhys Elliott

23 Jan 2025

Product Strategy

As we said in our games trends to watch article , 2025 will be the year of the portable. Nintendo kicked that off in earnest, finally lifting the curtain on its Switch 2 console. Here are the basics: The Switch 2 seems iterative – a bigger, better Switch with some quality-of-life improvements It i...

8 min read

Background music is a short-term win for DSPs – but it could be a long-term problem

Cover image for Background music is a short-term win for DSPs – but it could be a long-term problem

Olivia Jones

23 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Note: Following the publication of this piece, Spotify released a statement regarding Pelly's article, which is reproduced in full at the bottom of this page. In this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine , Liz Pelly published “ The Ghosts in the Machine ”.

6 min read

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 and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

4 min read

Instagram Edits: the CapCut clone targeting TikTok’s turmoil

Cover image for Instagram Edits: the CapCut clone targeting TikTok’s turmoil

Ben Woods

22 Jan 2025

Product Strategy

As TikTok grappled with its blackout on Sunday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took the opportunity to up the ante with one of his biggest rivals. Targeting TikTok’s 170 million US users, Mosseri revealed Edits: a new creator tools app is designed to support not only Instagram creators but those cre...

5 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 back online, with a new notice that thanks to the Trump administration’s willingness to work o...

4 min read

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, podcasting still relies on the most analog of recommendation systems for discovery in the US, UK, ...

3 min read

Are console platforms about to push smartphone-style subscription plans?

Cover image for Are console platforms about to push smartphone-style subscription plans?

Rhys Elliott

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

assassin’s creed

Diminishing returns on console generations, cash-strapped consumers, and increasing console prices might just open up a new pricing model for consoles – one in which consoles look increasingly like smartphones.

5 min read

Are creators wise to sell their offcuts to AI companies?

Cover image for Are creators wise to sell their offcuts to AI companies?

Ben Woods

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Most will be familiar with the adage: ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. Despite being a cliché, the saying lives on as it cuts to the heart of how individuals and companies perceive value.

5 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 leading global DSP that is independent and therefore has to focus place more focus on commercial...

5 min read

The future is podcast scenes: What podcasters can learn from history podcast success

Cover image for The future is podcast scenes: What podcasters can learn from history podcast success

Rutger Rosenborg

15 Jan 2025

Cultural trends

Whether the result of eschatological anxiety caused by shifting global political alignments or the decline in humanities students in academic institutions, the business of history – especially in audio – is booming.

3 min read

Meta pushes for “free speech” as TikTok falls short: a dramatic cultural shift for social

Cover image for Meta pushes for “free speech” as TikTok falls short: a dramatic cultural shift for social

Hanna Kahlert

15 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

The news cycle leaves no room to draw breath as strategic pivots and Supreme Court hearings come thick and fast. Changes are afoot – and they paint a very different picture of the digital landscape of the future.

6 min read

How a US TikTok ban could accelerate the rise of the Global South

Cover image for How a US TikTok ban could accelerate the rise of the Global South

Tatiana Cirisano

9 Jan 2025

Amid a flurry of year-end lists released last month, TikTok published a ranking of the platform’s most popular songs. While US music executives have been busy considering how a potential TikTok ban could impact their artists in the new year, the number one track on TikTok in 2024 was not by an Ame...

5 min read

New research: What do gamers really think about generative AI in games?

Cover image for New research: What do gamers really think about generative AI in games?

Rhys Elliott

9 Jan 2025

take two interactive

New year, new research! We capped off 2024 by asking a representative sample of gamers [n=6,300] how they feel about developers using generative AI to make games (and how it affects purchasing decisions).

6 min read

Audiobooks enter their entertainment era

Cover image for Audiobooks enter their entertainment era

Rutger Rosenborg

8 Jan 2025

It is easy to forget that the audiobook is not a new format. Novels, stories, and poems – much of what the modern world knows best through the written word – all have their origins in the oral traditions of the ancient world.

3 min read

The creator economy is booming, so why are we spending less time creating?

Cover image for The creator economy is booming, so why are we spending less time creating?

Ben Woods

8 Jan 2025

Creator economy

Product Strategy

YouTube’s grip on TV viewership in the West is tightening, reflecting the growing power of the creator economy. Nielsen data from July 2024 shows that YouTube now has the highest TV audience share on US smart TVs,10% versus Netflix’s 8.

4 min read

Musk calls UK government ‘tyrannical’ and TikTok could leave the US: is global culture going regional again?

Cover image for Musk calls UK government ‘tyrannical’ and TikTok could leave the US: is global culture going regional again?

Hanna Kahlert

7 Jan 2025

A swath of elections in 2024 have paved the way for regulatory changes in the social media sphere, with talk of bans and restrictions meeting the governmental meddling of CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

4 min read

Anti-algorithm, anti-perfection - the rise of a music counter-culture

Mark Mulligan

20 Dec 2024

Today’s music landscape is one defined by abundance and immediacy. In today’s chronically-online world, everything is over-ground, immediately. Scenes have to work really hard to be underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or marketing person is going to see the buzz and try to bottle its ...

5 min read

MIDiA’s five games trends to watch in 2025

Cover image for MIDiA’s five games trends to watch in 2025

Rhys Elliott

19 Dec 2024

The year 2024 has been eventful for the games market to say the least. Call of Duty came to Game Pass, Sony released its PS5 Pro console, live-service games faced a reckoning, and gaming has solidified its space at the heart of entertainment.

8 min read

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