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.

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...

min read

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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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

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...

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

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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...

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Audiobooks enter their entertainment era

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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...

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

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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....

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MIDiA’s five games trends to watch in 2025

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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...

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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...

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

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

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...

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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...

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‘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

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

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...

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The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

Cover image for The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

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

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

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....

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