In the latest Trapital podcast, Dan Runcie talks to MIDiA Research’s Tati Cirisano about short form video and the three-sided battleground being fought between TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. Questions asked were which company added the most value - to artists and creators, to the music industry, and to its parent company. The conclusions: TikTok is the most valuable to artists and creators given its massive reach and cultural cache. YouTube Shorts is the one that’s most valuable to music since strong agreements are in place, and YouTube is proud of the billions it pays to the industry. Reels is the most valuable for its parent company.

Instagram has launched Reels in over 50 countries, and it allows users to record, edit, share and discover videos of up to 15 seconds, backed with audio and music including millions of songs licensed from music companies, TechCrunch reports. Instagram Reels will complement the app’s other video features, which comprise Stories (copied from Snapchat), Live and IGTV for longer-form content. Today, TikTok threatened legal action against an executive order issued by American President Donald Trump that would ban the Chinese social media app from doing business with U.S. firms, TechCrunch reports.

People will leave a comment on SoundCloud, maybe send a message, and do a repost, but that’s a very narrow spectrum of interaction among communities of creatives. Where do people share their work-in-progress music? Where do artists share their excitement about releases of other artists in their community? Where do people ask for feedback and create back-and-forths around creative expression? Instagram - Music / Tech / Future says in an analysis of a shift in user's behavior. A way for SoundCloud to get back into center - AI.

GQ has an interesting piece about how celebrities, in lockdown just like everybody else, have found a common global venue: "Instagram Live has become a digital smorgasbord, catering to all manner of pop-culture predilections. It’s now the premier venue for a collection of semiregular events that attract viewership from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. While all these shows differ in content, there’s an energetic thread that runs throughout them: a quaint clumsiness and a spontaneous sort of humanity that you rarely encounter in such abundance on celebrity social media channels".

"We’re not creating areas for Instagram, but we know the areas we create have to be Instagram-friendly" - Tamás Kádár, CEO of Sziget in Budapest, told Mix Magazine in their excellent article about how Instagram is changing design of clubs and festivals. Or, as Barcelona's Elrow David Jordan puts it - “when we prepare a new […]

Mix Magazine explores influences Instagram has on artists' mental health with particular focus on comment sections, unwanted feedback and how these dangers magnify when it comes to DJs and producers from marginalised communities. Mix Mag proves a point to some extent, but largely just proves the obvious - there's way more good than harm from […]

“One of the biggest stars in the world is using it [Instagram aesthetic] in their video – that might mean it’s reached its peak” - Lev Manovich, author of 'Instagram and Contemporary Image', says about Taylor Swift new video 'ME!'. Maddie Raedts, founder of the Influencer Marketing Agency (IMA), believes that perfection is no longer […]