RT @RuncieDan: Most social networks get popular in the U.S. first then expand globally. WhatsApp did the opposite. It’s arguably the most “….

RT @c_osazuwa: I run a free, virtual music tech conference. It starts today. Come hang out:

Explored the past and future of Meta - and what it reflects about the social / entertainment landscape entirely - with @RuncieDan for this week's episode!.

So what are we supposed to do now? I present. the case for anti-scale. I could try to summarize, but it’s best to read the piece here:

“Scaling up” used to take years - time to develop a core customer base. When things go viral literally overnight, there’s no time for that. And so brands tend to overharvest their customers: strip the resource so much/so fast that it can no longer regenerate.

3. This strategy is starting to become, dare I say, counterproductive? Audiences are exhausted. Brands burn out too quickly, and crucially, they fail to nurture core audience bases.

2. This incentivized companies to chase virality, and when they did manage to capture attention, to milk it for all it was worth. This worked for a time.

1. It became harder to create mass-market products, get consumers’ attention on them, and harder still to have staying power.

Fragmentation is only the start of the “why”. Here’s what happened over the last five years:.

It’s been a while, but I wanted to share something I wrote recently which I think is important. It’s about entertainment’s obsession with scale, and why it’s just not working anymore, not the way it used to, maybe for the first time in our history. 🧵.

RT @midiaresearch: 🚨 Just released! We will just leave this here… Grab your drink of choice and get reading 🔗👉 #mu….

RT @midiaresearch: 📉 #Merchandise market growth will slow significantly by 2030. How do you think the industry will be pushed to innovate?….

This week's blog is on 100 Gigs. A data dump was the wrong approach for today's oversaturated content world — but Drake is tapped in enough to know that a celeb's burner IG with 300K followers is the shortcut to culture, *not* the mainstream DSP where 75M listen to their music ⬇️.

This week's Trapital ep is a deep-dive on StubHub and the controversial secondary ticketing world. Hear why @RuncieDan and I think the company's turbulent history is worthy of its own film adaptation:.

At the link below, clients can download the full, 40+ page report. There’s also a FREE summary available to everyone, and a video discussion of the findings with hit songwriters Mariami Bibilouri and Helienne Lindvall (@helienne):

@midiaresearch Songwriters are also increasingly building brands — both industry-facing, as well as in terms of external fanbases. To that point, the majority of songwriters *across age levels* are using social media to build brands around their songwriting — not just a gen Z thing!.

@midiaresearch So, songwriters must grow and diversify their revenue. We found that what separates full-time songwriters from aspirants is full-timers have more “front-end” revenue in addition to back-end royalties — think upfront fees, works for hire, and brand deals.

@midiaresearch It follows that “livable” annual songwriting income (debatable, but we put this at $30K+) is concentrated in the top 10% of songwriters, and the majority make nothing or under $10K.

@midiaresearch In other words, a songwriter can overcome every other challenge — finding time to create, securing a recording artist, releasing the song, and having it be a hit — and they will likely *still* struggle to collect meaningful royalties.