Reports: Engagement

Browse all of our reports, featuring our analysts' expert insights and analysis of audience segmentation, emerging trends and technologies, value chains, market shares, predictions and more – backed by our proprietary survey data and bespoke models & forecasts. Become a subscriber to get new ones every month, or just pick one to get started.

Cover image for Defining entertainment superfans

Defining entertainment superfans
Characteristics, categories, and commercial impact

Olivia Jones and Laura Fisher

15 Sep 2025

France Australia Spotify

Superfans represent a highly valuable yet consistently underleveraged audience segment for the entertainment industry. What drives this disconnect is the fact that – despite frequent anecdotal use of the term – a standardised, empirical definition remains absent, preventing companies from systematically identifying, nurturing, and monetising th...

Cover image for Beyond the screen

Beyond the screen
How and why gaming merch and collectibles fuel fandom

Brandon Sutton

3 Sep 2025

Marketing Digital Fandom

The physical gaming merchandise and collectibles market is a multibillion-dollar industry that serves as both organic marketing and a way to strengthen community engagement. However, the space has grown increasingly complex due to a surge in fan-made merch, a crowded field of game properties, and economic pressures like the rising cost of living.

Cover image for Streaming strongholds

Streaming strongholds
High-potential markets for global music players

Perry Gresham

11 Aug 2025

ARPU Labels Streaming

While the balance of music streamers continues to tip towards global south markets, their smaller ARPU rates limit their revenues. Meanwhile, periodic price-rises and the advent of supremium will reinforce the contributions from the West. This report highlights streaming strongholds, those markets which, underscored by high music engagement and his...

Cover image for The future of creator apps

The future of creator apps
Fuelling engagement with fandom

Ben Woods

29 Jul 2025

Creators Spotify Artists

The AI boom has unleashed a wave of creator tools, but some are struggling to make the transition from interesting and experimental to compulsive and essential. Fandom offers a solution by tying creation to a consumer’s personal passion, appetite for community engagement and a desire to have a stake in the entertainment they love.

Cover image for Beyond the hype

Beyond the hype
AI music creation in 2025

Ben Woods

3 Jul 2025

Creators France Australia

Generative AI tools are forging a new type of creator and shifting music creator workflows. While creators and consumers alike are interested in AI tools as they emerge, converting users is still an evident challenge. Music fandom has its foot in the door to increasing AI-assisted consumer creation and could pave the way for niche AI tools.

Cover image for Leveraging anime

Leveraging anime
A nuanced scene not a genre

Ben Woods

30 Apr 2025

Netflix Content Entertainment

Engaging younger audiences remains the entertainment industry’s biggest challenge. However, Japanese anime is achieving this by growing penetration with each new generation of consumers. Key to this success is its ability to dovetail with the fragmented nature of modern entertainment consumption to reach consumers in their scenes.

Cover image for AI chatbots

AI chatbots
The new conductors of entertainment

Ben Woods

26 Mar 2025

Creators Digital Entertainment

AI chatbots are intersecting our entertainment lives as the tech majors transform consumer devices into digital companions. Such moves are building upon the foundations laid by smart speakers and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to elevate chatbot engagement towards the mainstream.

Cover image for The superfans of music superstars

The superfans of music superstars
Identity and cut-through

Olivia Jones

17 Feb 2025

Labels US Artists

Fandom is becoming the music industry’s golden goose, with labels focusing on building and monetising superfan bases for their top artists. However, superfan behaviours are changing in response to oversaturation and hyper-fragmentation. What once worked for measuring and monetising fandom will not work the same in the future.

Cover image for MIDiA Research global games forecasts 2025–2031

MIDiA Research global games forecasts 2025–2031
The market is mature, so double-digit growth is a fantasy

Perry Gresham, Mark Qi and Rhys Elliott

30 Jan 2025

US Global Gaming

Interested in ' MIDiA Research global games forecasts 2025–2031' ? Access the free version here . Recent years have been tough for the games market. Like many industries, gaming overextended itself following the black swan event that was the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cover image for Closing the background gap

Closing the background gap
Focused versus background audio listening

Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Annie Langston

30 Nov 2022

Spotify Radio YouTube

The rise of attention inflation means that consumers are maximising their limited time by multitasking between various formats, spurring a rise in background consumption. This creates a “new” space for platforms to compete for consumers’ time. Among entertainment formats, audio is best placed to conquer background listening, but music streami...

Cover image for Attention recession impacts on D2C growth

Attention recession impacts on D2C growth

Richard Broadhurst

26 Jul 2022

Subscriptions Streaming Spotify

Weekly active user (WAU) penetration for the top streaming services is now slowing with quarter-on-quarter growth effectively flat for the leading subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. Peak attention is now clearly here for video. The looming attention recession, which is already impacting the wider digital entertainment landscape, will exa...

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Audio ad opportunity
Niche targeting unlocks attention

Annie Langston

4 May 2022

Apple Spotify YouTube

Podcast advertising is one of the key income sources for both audio platforms and creators alike. Ad agencies and platforms must go ever deeper with targeting capabilities by learning more about the other entertainment habits of audio consumers. Social...

Cover image for From social media to creator tools

From social media to creator tools
The evolution of UGC

Hanna Kahlert

30 Sep 2021

Apple Spotify YouTube

Entertainment is suffering intense competition as audience attention time, already saturated before the pandemic, is hit by the gradual return of ‘in real life’ activities. A flurry of new propositions over the last year and a half, namely in streaming and social media, are competing on largely similar grounds – making differentiation ever mo...

Cover image for Unlocking mainstream AVOD

Unlocking mainstream AVOD
The silver streamer catalyst

Tim Mulligan

31 Jul 2021

Subscriptions Streaming Amazon

Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) has been championed as the free-to-access equivalent of subscription video on demand (SVOD). However, for AVOD to become the digital successor to free-to-view TV it needs to break out of its current niche user base.

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Consumer Engagement
Building Sustainable Brands in 2020 and Beyond

Hanna Kahlert

20 Apr 2020

Marketing YouTube Netflix

Brands have an ongoing engagement problem. No matter how much data they use or how targeted they go, competition is fierce, consumer attention is saturated, and all usage comes at the expense of time spent elsewhere. With the ubiquity of advertising, brand choices are as much a personal statement by the consumer to their peers as a testament to tru...

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Demand Creation
What’s the Next Big Growth Curve for Music?

Keith Jopling

14 Jan 2020

Labels Spotify Marketing

Over the past 40 years the music industry has seen highs and lows, mirroring the careers of many of the legacy artists the industry plays host to. The most spectacular successes in the music business, from the Sony Walkman to MTV, to iTunes and Spotify – have all generated demand for music in entirely new ways.

Cover image for US and UK Sports Fans

US and UK Sports Fans
Reaching Digital Natives

Alistair Taylor

6 Dec 2019

YouTube Amazon revenue

Sports as a product is feeling the squeeze of the peak attention economy. Sports fans in the traditional sense are ageing, and appealing to a younger digitally-native audience is a fundamental issue that rights holders can no longer ignore. Sports rights holders have realised the importance of their virtual (gaming) counterparts, acknowledging that...

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