MIDiA Research, known for its extraordinarily detailed, insightful, and finely articulated research, has released its 2025 predictions. Presented in a webinar last week, we now offer a rundown of the accompanying slide deck provided to RAIN by MIDiA.
The key theme for the future of music delivery, in MIDiA’s view, is a focus shift from streaming platforms to social networks. It’s Social’s Stage Now is the presentation title.
“The lack of ability to connect directly with fans on streaming is becoming a creator friction point and a driver for social platforms.” –MIDiA Research “25 Predictions; It’s social’s stage now”
More granularly within that overriding thematic importance of social media, the 2025 predictions are divided into five media categories:
- MUSIC
- SOCIAL
- VIDEO AND CREATOR ECONOMY
- GAMES
- AUDIO
Music
This is home to the central 2025 prediction: Musicians will gravitate t0 social platforms, and not only for interaction with fans. Social will increasingly become a release platform.
Along with thisMIDiA predicts the concept of an”atomised label” — a new class with a unique conception of what a music company should be. One key difference: no more investor capital which must be earned back in some way.
The “atomised label” concept naturally means greater segmentation; that can mean segmenting fans into super fans, and general availability into limited access tiers.
These concepts predict a changed global market in which western countries remain central drivers of revenue, while the “GlobalSouth” (the southern hemisphere generally) will grow its percentage of consumption and culture.
MIDiA confirms this prediction with results from its Music Creator Survey conducted in Q4 this year:
Social
“Social is eating the world.” — MIDiA Research “25 Predictions; It’s social’s stage now”
MIDiA Research makes four concise predictions about music content’s more vigorous adoption of social media distribution and audience connection:
- Social bifurcation: Platforms will split between those focusing on entertainment as a passive consumption activity, from a niche of creators to broad audiences, to those where more people are casually creative with smaller, more closely-
connected audiences - Regulatory rollercoasters: New governments and new regulations will affect the winners and losers in the otherwise
booming social space: with X and TikTok the bellwethers. - An AI content flood: AI was the catchphrase of 2024. While its commercial implications are still waiting largely on copyright and consumer adoption, social is the home of DIY AI generation – and growing floods of content will affect social’s own USP.
- Cultural nichification: Algorithms continue to silo users into their own ‘echo chambers’, exacerbated by AI. The 2024 election cycles demonstrated how deeply entrenched these have become, and how this will affect entertainment – and social’s ability to boost marketing – In 2025 and beyond.
Video and Creator Economy
It is this category in which MIDiA Research makes its boldest and most detailed cluster of predictions. First among them is this:
“AI chatbots to become the conductors of creation and consumption.”
Two paired flowcharts (below) illustrate MIDiA’s thinking about the rise of AI chatbots in the creation and consumption of music.
MIDiA’s three predictions specific to the Video/Creator category ARE concisely expressed and sweeping in scopE:
- Brands tap into creation and consumption: Content overwhelm will evolve into creation overwhelm as consumers are swamped by opportunities to create. Brands will either partner with or deploy their own AI tools to drive consumers towards interacting, sharing, and self-marketing their products.
- AI tools go ad-supported: Generative AI tools will begin courting advertisers to make their services more widely available to help cover their colossal investment costs. This will open a new form of targeted advertising for brands, as the ad-tolerance of creator-consumers will differ from those who purely consume social media.
- Avatar chatbots break through: Engagement with avatar chatbots will push beyond the early-adopter stage driven by two complimenting forces: accelerated usage of AI chatbots spearheaded by ChatGPT and the continued rise of VTubing (i.e., creators performing via avatars) on live streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. If deployed effectively, avatar chatbots can increase engagement while collecting user behaviour data to marry with targeted advertising from brands.
Audio
MIDiA’s predictions about the global audio industry is keyed to the concept of “format agnosticism.” The idea is best described in MIDiA’s illustration of podcast consumption preferences for podcast app users:
On the downside, note the 17-22 percent of podcast listeners who prefer watching clips on short-form video platforms — a sizable cohort which presumably is not exposed to ads.
As hypo-attention increases, the efficacy of digital advertising declines, especially on social platforms. Businesses will increasingly look for new methods of advertising to cut through the noise. –MIDiA Research “25 Predictions; It’s social’s stage now”
MIDiA makes three predictions in the Audio section of this report. We suggest a close look at #3, which suggests that reduced audience attention will reduce the effectiveness of digital audio advertising:
- The rise of format agnosticism: As video podcasts (thanks largely to YouTube) continue their rise, Spotify will double down on their investment in them. The result will be a format without format.
- AI will make audio production scalable: As AI technology like Google’s NotebookLM and RSS.com’s GOST.ai gains popularity, audio production will become less of a manual process, freeing up creator time and opening the door for new entrants to become audio creators themselves.
- The proliferation of digital audio advertising: As hypo-attention increases, the efficacy of digital advertising declines, especially on social platforms. Businesses will increasingly look for new methods of advertising to cut through the noise.
MIdiA Research also included a Games section in this data-intensive deck — a bit outside our scope but interesting. Download the freely available slides HERE.
