Last year you listened to 494 hours of podcasts, your favourite genre was probably true crime, but
your top podcast was Media Industries! Perhaps? Well, maybe. We’re so used to algorithms
wrapping our data in a neat ball and presenting it back to us at the end of the year. The trailblazer of
these algorithmic events has been Spotify’s end-of-year celebration, Spotify Wrapped. Taylor
Annabell (Researcher, Utrecht University) and Nina Vindum Rasmussen (LSE Fellow, London School
of Economics and Political Science) help us to unwrap this phenomenon. In particular, they talk us
through insights gained from workshops they organised to get Spotify users thinking critically and
creatively about Wrapped.

Copyright has been predicated on protecting original works of human authorship. When AI generates new works, however, what happens to the status of authorship, originality and protection? For this episode, we are very pleased to welcome back Tanya Aplin Aplin (Professor of Intellectual Property Law, King’s College London). Initially, Tanya outlines how copyright variously covers individual, collaborative and corporate forms of authorship. The discussion then moves on to unpack how the uses of AI problematise established conceptions of authorship and originality in creative production.

Across many industries, a key belief driving the current boom in AI use is the economic logic that certain processes can be streamlined in ways that reduce human effort and thereby bring efficiencies and cost reductions. How possible is this in the media industries, however, which have traditionally relied on high value, skills intensive human labour to create unique, distinct outputs? Putting this economic conundrum into perspective, we are very pleased to have as our guests Gillian Doyle (Professor of Media Economics, University of Glasgow) and Sabine Baumann (Professor of Digital Business, Berlin School of Economics and Law).

Developments in AI changed, transformed and disrupted many industries, but one of the industries where these shifts have been most felt is in music. From the bedroom producer using the assistance of AI in their creation, to multi-billion dollar music companies using AI for data management, AI is appearing everywhere. For this episode, Hazel Savage (VP Music Intelligence, SoundCloud) talks through her own experiences launching and subsequently investing in AI music start-ups, before explaining distinctions between the applications of generative and assistive AI, and some of the ethical challenges arising from the uses of AI in music creativity.

When we think of AI, we tend to think about the chat bot, the prompt that generates the new image, the AI assistant that helps with some of our everyday admin. But, what about everything behind the curtain? The power dynamics, economics, and politics behind AI. Nick Srnicek (Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy, King’s College London) talks about the application of AI in the media industries, but also the how AI industry has achieved a recognizable form through the prominence of key players in hardware manufacturing, cloud computing infrastructure, producers of models, and app developers.

While there is a lot of talk about how AI is transforming creative industries, before this discussion, there was already an industry where artificial intelligence was not only prominent, but a must in most outputs: the digital games industry. Currently, the industry is going through tumultuous times globally, while generative AI is disrupting game development and production processes. Digdem Sezen (Senior Lecturer in Games, University for the Creative Arts) historicizes the application of AI in games, before assessing how the industry is utilising AI tools to innovate the creation and content of games.

Generative AI challenges the human monopoly on creativity, and consequently, when addressing the impacts of AI on the media industries, one of the highlight concerns that has emerged is the extent to which applications of AI may disrupt, and potentially also displace, the work of creative practitioners. Hye-Kyung Lee (Professor of Cultural Policy, King’s College London) reflects on how uses of AI have intensified a range of uncertainties concerning the status and value of human labour in creative work. She discusses how AI introduces insecurities over the role, rights, protection and distinctiveness of human creativity.

Streamed video entertainment services are well known for their systemic collection and processing of big data. For the users of those services, the application of that data will manifest itself in the form of computer-generated recommendations. But amongst creative practitioners in the screen industries, what relationships and interactions do they form with that type of data? Nina Vindum Rasmussen (LSE Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science) outlines how various power dynamics emerge from the interactions which emerge between screen workers and the data produced and held by major streaming services.

Orçun Can and Paul McDonald (King’s College London) Opening series two of the Media Industries podcast, Orçun and Paul offer a sneak peek of what to expect from the upcoming episodes.

Traditionally, copyright has been predicated on protecting and sustaining human creativity. From the pen to the camera, human creativity has involved the use of tools. With digital forms of creativity, computing technologies have variously become the tools for creative action. What happens to the status of copyright, however, when the machine is no longer just a tool, and actively makes decisions in the creative process? In the first of two episodes on AI and copyright, Tanya Aplin (Professor of Intellectual Property Law, King’s College London) guides us through some of the issues emerging from current debates over relationships between AI, copyright and creativity. For this episode, Tanya outlines how the status of AI generated works varies between jurisdictions, and also reflects on disputes arising from the uses of copyrighted works as AI training data. In a subsequent episode, she returns to pick up the conversation on copyright and the protection of AI-generated outputs.

Focusing on what he calls ‘mobile production’, Kevin Sanson (Queensland University of Technology) discusses the spatial configuration of creative relationships in film and television, and the logistical role of labour in making and maintaining those relationships. Yuening Li (Maynooth University) speaks about her work examining the place of digital payment services in our lives and the social media functions of fintech. Finally, as part of the CresCine (www.crescine.eu) project comparing film markets in small European nations, Cathrin Helen Bengesser and Jakob Isak Nielsen (Aarhus University) report initial insights relating to audienceperceptions of domestic productions, and also trends in genre popularity.

Eva Cheuk-Yin Li (Lancaster University) introduces her work on the rise of the Girls Love media industry in Southeast Asia, and particularly the growth of GL television series production in Thailand. Jeanette Steemers (King’s College London) and Andrea Esser highlight findings from ‘Screen Encounters with Britain’, a project examining what young audiences in Denmark, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are thinking about British film and television output. Finally, Nino Domazetovikj (Free University of Brussels) outlines how transnational video streaming services are reshaping commissioning strategies and production investment for scripted television fiction in smaller European markets.

Forum Mithani (Cardiff University) outlines how in recent years Japanese dramas have achieved greater prominence in the international scripted television format market, focusing in particular on the remaking of ‘Mother’. Anthony Killick (Liverpool John Moores University) identifies how, since 2018, various developments in the industry and culture of film in Saudi Arabia should be read as indicative of the state’s broader cultural ideology. Finally, Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer (Kozminski University / London School of Economics and Political Science) provides a snapshot of her research examining how online news tabloids in Poland, the UK, and US frame political discourse.

Mark Deuze (University of Amsterdam) highlights issues of mental wellbeing in media work, and the paradox of professionals equally voicing unhappiness and joy about their working lives. Ivana Kostovska (Free University of Brussels) reflects on how regulatory responses amongst European nations to the popularization of video streaming services are variously obliging streamers to invest in local production. Finally, Aoife Quinn Hegarty (Technological University of Dublin) offers an overview of her research analysing historical shifts in how Ireland’s feminist movement has been informed by and used the country’s media.

Doris Eikhof (University of Glasgow) reports insights from the Gender Equity Policy (GEP) Analysis project which conducted a comparative evaluation of gender equity policies for film industries in Canada, Germany, and the UK. Vejune Zemaitye (Tallinn University) outlines the scope and aim of CresCine (www.crescine.eu), a large multi-partner project examining the competitiveness of small European nations in the international film business. Finally, Ashley Woodfall (Bournemouth University / Children's Media Foundation) talks about some of the challenges now confronting public service media in the UK when trying to engage the child audience.

Christopher Meir (Charles III University of Madrid) looks at how streaming platforms are transforming the conditions in which European films are produced and circulated. Tonguc Sezen (University for the Creative Arts) reflects on how large language models (LLMs) are being applied as aids in the writing of digital game narratives. Finally, Mathilde Sanders (Utrecht University) outlines the work of PubHubs (pubhubs.net), a Dutch project building a decentralised online social network based on the public values of privacy, security, user friendliness, and inclusion.

Ulrike Rohn (Tallinn University and the ScreenMe podcast) introduces the scope of research in media economics and media management, and her work co-editing The Handbook of Media Economics. Yuval Katz (Loughborough University) draws on research conducted in Israel/Palestine to discuss how the creation of media can offer a space for conceptualizing peace. Finally, Christa van Raalte (Bournemouth University) talks about the role of production managers in UK television, reflecting on the industry’s problem retaining PMs, and the feminisation of the role.

Munira Cheema (King’s College London) provides an overview of her research examining how anti-state and anti-establishment publics in Pakistan express themselves online through Twitter/X and YouTube. Kristian Redhead Ahm (Danish School of Media and Journalism) considers the impact, in Denmark, of streaming logics on public service broadcasting principles and narrative practices in documentary production. Finally, Liz Evans and Cassie Brummitt (University of Nottingham) discuss their project, TV2054, exploring how UK audiences imagine the future devices, content, and viewing behaviours of television.

Nur Kareelawati Abd Karim (Islamic Science University of Malaysia) discusses some of the challenges and insights arising from her study of the production culture of religious television at the Islam Channel in London. Madison Trusolino (Dalhousie University) situates her on-going work on the commercial actor lockout in Canadian television within broader concerns about formal and informal labour organisation in arts and cultural industries. Finally, Némésis Srour (Center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies) delves into the history of how Bollywood films have circulated in Middle Eastern territories.

Drawing on research into podcast and video game production in Denmark, Mads Møller T. Anderson (University of Copenhagen) discusses how experiences of workplace autonomy vary according to industry logics, professional roles, and individual needs. Rowan Aust (University of Bournemouth / ReelTime Media) unpacks the meanings of ‘good work’ in the film and television industries, reflecting on her experience advocating for flexible working, job sharing, and overtime. Finally, as public service media struggle to connect with child audiences, Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova (University of Liverpool) argues for integrating children into discussions concerning the design of programming.