SHAPING THE FUTURE OF CULTURE ONE REPORT AT A TIME
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Search for what’s a fad.
Search for what’s real. Search for what’s here to stay.
We go deep and attempt to make your life a little easier by searching deep on topics affecting audiences, commerce, and community in handy dandy reports for easy perusal. If you want to dig into any of the topics here, just sign up for our newsletter and the report you are interested in will magically show up in your inbox!
Avatars- Human like us?
From Bitmoji to METAHUMAN, the avatar landscape is on fire! How are people responding to the current avatars on offer and how can we shape parasocial relationships in a positive way with the design of a bot? We dig into this and more!
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Tools like Meta’s Codec Avatars and Apple Vision Pro’s persona tech aim to replicate facial expressions and gestures in real time, making digital communication more human-like..
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Less human, more fun
Cross-Platform Interoperability Is Emerging
Digital Goods continue to grow
Near Future of Content Discovery
From Substack to Tik Tok to the all mightly powerful ChatGPT, digital discovery of your favourite new song, actress, or painter is even more dynamic than ever before. What does the next few years look like as we push new tech to mass consumer adoption and micro communities scale?
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In the blink of an eye, AI platforms like ChatGPT have scaled at monumental speeds. They are fast becoming the new frontier of content discovery and community.
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Small communities are growing: Substack is quietly becoming a force. The platform surpassed 5 million paid subscriptions by March 2025, adding over 1 million between November 2024 and March 2025.
We surveyed a group of film fans about how they find films. ChatGPT made up 13% of their sources in 2024, it was 0.
Near Future of Connected Entertainment
This report is a fun and insightful dive into what's happening now and in the near future of connected entertainment. What we bring to audiences worldwide relies on a system of interconnected teams, technology, and trends that shape what is possible.
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The expectation of a multi-platform experience from audiences is growing. The “Internet of Things” has become a reality, and the world is being designed to connect agnostically. The only problem with that is businesses don’t like that very much!
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The launch of Google’s AR glasses in partnership with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker is one of the most significant trends in this area. It opens the aperture to connecting multiple needs with one device.
Products like Humane are signals of what is possible, but were launched prematurely.
The evolution of the responsive web space is making it easier to build and ship AR experiences to broader audiences faster.
Shifting Landscape of Live Entertainment
Forward Studio and JamBase worked to explore the shifting landscape of live entertainment. From music to installations, the team worked to gather trends and key insights that are shaping the next three to five years of live entertainment.
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Live entertainment has rebounded and is evolving. From hybrid music and health events to digital twin performances, humans want to connect, dance, and play more now than ever. Challenges include ticket prices and inflation causing the rising prices of everything.
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Tech-enabled performances with stage-connected devices worn by fans.
Smaller venues with more tour dates.
Artificial Intelligence is increasingly integrated into music production, offering tools that assist artists in composing, mixing, and mastering tracks. Platforms like Suno and Google's Magenta Studio enable musicians to generate melodies and harmonies, streamlining the creative process. The ability for the AI to create music from scratch is a major point of tension to the trend.
Mobile AR Now
Over 600,000 creators built 2 million AR effects with Spark, but it didn’t survive. One would think AR is on the way out, but with Google, Meta, and others doubling down on glasses, the AR form factor may be the thing that changes, not necessarily it disappearance of AR altogether. Read on for more.
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Tech co’s and brands partnering to create AR enabled products of the future
Cross-platform AX experiences
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Multi-Surface experiences
AR gaming
The Innovation of Innovation
We can turn a morning idea into a prototype or presentation by the afternoon. Businesses pour more resources into their innovation processes, trying to translate the latest technologies into the next record- breaking experience or product. Now we need research and innovation tools to catch-up!
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From therapy to testing concepts and copy, AI agents are growing in popularity, but trusting an open- source platform to be the truth-teller of our future could be a fool’s errand.
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Rapid Prototyping using AI agents
Counter-trend of qualitative research being used more
AI can create and test concepts faster for simple ideas
Synthetic Twins for testing is on the board
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