Lean-through consumption Communities are key

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20,000 foot view:  Entertainment consumption is increasingly shaped by context, as consumers are driven by attention saturation to overlap behaviours as well as choose between them. Different forms of entertainment are better suited to different contexts, with some lending themselves to more social behaviours than others. Fandom emerges when independent consumption meets the social context of a larger group of like-minded fans. Thus, the increasingly social nature of entertainment is lending itself towards growing fandom, which is more monetizable than passive consumption. 

Key insights 

• As post-Covid behaviours resume, entertainment propositions are competing once again for the free time made available by lockdown, which was allocated to entertainment (a        increase, referred to as the ‘Covid boom’)
• Prospects like video, which are more prone to all-or-nothing attention, are more at risk. Meanwhile, propositions like music and broader audio, which are already natively background behaviours, are easier to overlap with these resuming activities 
       of        regularly discover new music on TikTok, behind only YouTube, at        They are also more likely than average to discover new music on social media, at        and slightly more likely to do so through personal recommendations, at       
• For video,        of        discover new TV shows / films through personal recommendations, while        are just about on par with the average, at       
• For digital natives, the personalised and social-driven channels for discovery are more important, whereas older consumers are slightly more likely to rely on traditional recommendations 
• While music may be a background activity in the streaming-driven passive listening stage, and video commands more focused attention, music has a broader range of other monetizable, fan-driven activities 
       of consumers listen to full albums,        go to gigs and concerts, and        watch live streamed concerts and performances.        also pay to download single tracks or albums, and        buy t-shirts or other merchandise from artists that they like         of Twitch weekly active users (WAUs) stream songs they have heard on TV shows or films,        go to gigs and concerts,        watch live streamed concerts and performances,        pay to download individual tracks or albums and        buy merch, like T-shirts, from bands that they like 
• Fans do not just like a certain artist or show, they like the sense of belonging and understanding in the art and surrounding community. Thus, it makes sense that the more natively social consumers are, the more likely they are to engage in monetizable fan behaviours

Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Instagram, Minions, Netflix, Snapchat, Spotify, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube