About The Medium
The Medium identifies essential signals on how technology is shaping the business of culture, and how the marketplace is evolving in response.
IIn 2025, we are living through a relentless transformation of how culture is created, distributed, and monetized—one that is creating both unprecedented risk and opportunity for decision-makers.
Last year, The Medium dove headfirst into this dynamic with interviews of eight innovators in the generative AI space (these interviews can be found both in the archive and on The Information). They are building businesses at the frontiers of commercials, film production, gaming, music, YouTube… basically “culture”.
Whether they ultimately succeed or pivot, their visions and insights offer more clarity into the future than I have found anywhere else. Collectively, they offer a strong starting point for journeying deeper into this moment of market transformation to help you identify:
Market signals that popular trades and mainstream publications miss
Connections between technological evolutions and actionable business decisions
"White spaces" of opportunity to improve product, investment, and strategic decision-making
New conversations (in audio and video) with other pioneering creators, innovators and executives will highlight technological and creative breakthroughs with an eye to 2035 and beyond.
The Medium is an independent, reader-supported publication drawing on 20 years of corporate, entrepreneurial and analytical experience in digital media.
Join over 20,000 investors, executives and entrepreneurs who receive The Medium in their inbox.
Questions after reading this FAQ? Email Andrew at andrew@parqor.com.
FAQ
Who is The Medium for?
Creators: Gain foresight into tomorrow's creative opportunities and potential technological pivots that help you to adapt and stay relevant
Executives: Access decision-critical market signals typically obscured by mainstream reporting, enabling more confident strategic planning and resource allocation.
Investors: Identify emerging white spaces and market inflection points before they become obvious, strengthening your investment theses and timing
I’m a past subscriber to The Medium, how do I log in to Substack?
Your email address for The Medium is the same one you used when you registered via The Information. Please follow the instructions found here to login to Substack using this email address.
If you use a different email address for your Substack subscriptions and want to transfer your existing subscription to that email address, please follow the instructions found here.
Why subscribe to The Medium?
Over four billion smartphone users worldwide now create, distribute and consume culture in real-time. YouTube, TikTok, Meta, Substack, Patreon and OnlyFans enable many diverse content monetization models. Keeping up with the changes across both traditional and online media feels overwhelming.
Meanwhile, AI accelerates the exponential progress (and disappearance) of business models in real-time, creating three critical challenges for executives, investors, and creators:
Information overload makes identifying meaningful signals nearly impossible
Accelerating innovation cycles leave less time for decision-making
Conventional analysis and media coverage consistently miss the significance of market signals
The Medium addresses these challenges by extracting clear signals about the future from the in-market experiments and startups of pioneering creators, engineers and executives. We serve as your filter for transforming overwhelming complexity into actionable intelligence.
The result: You get clarity to see which developments truly matter, how they connect to longer-term market trends, and what future business models they predict—well before your peers and competitors recognize the same patterns.
How can I subscribe to The Medium?
The Medium is an independent, reader-supported publication drawing on 20 years of corporate, entrepreneurial and analytical experience in digital media. There are two ways to access these insights:
Standard ($15/month or $180/year): Monthly or annual access to in-depth interviews and insights sent 2x/week (typically Mondays and Thursdays).
PARQOR Platinum ($499/year): Exclusive monthly analyses and presentations, deeper thematic explorations across interviews, the ability to send advance questions for interviews and an exclusive community of leading investors, entrepreneurs and executives from The Medium’s three years on The Information.
How do I upgrade to a Platinum account?
Whether you are a free reader wishing to get paid access, or a paid subscriber looking to join the Platinum Tier, sign in to your account on Substack and follow the instructions found here.
Platinum tier subscribers will receive monthly presentations of themes and are invited to send advance questions for interviews. This additional level of analysis and interaction will deliver three specific advantages:
Pattern matching of curated signals from across the cultural landscape will help you to spot emerging opportunities and risks before your competitors and standard subscribers to The Medium.
Contextual analysis of how each signal might reshape your specific corner of the business of culture, whether you're creating content, investing in media, or leading organizational change
Structural insights—like how game theory (mapping content and advertising to consumer intent) has become essential for online media businesses in 2024—that help you to interpret signals in a coherent, broader market context
My email for Substack publications is different from The Medium, what do I do?
If you use a different email address for your Substack subscriptions and want to transfer your subscription to The Medium to that email address, please follow the instructions found here." here.
How do I change the email address associated with my account?
Please follow the instructions found here to change your email address.
Can I print a PDF of your essays?
To print a PDF of any past essay, navigate to any article online by either clicking on the header of an essay you have received via email, or by visiting an article on The Medium directly. You will see a the 3-dot menu (...) to the right of the Share button. Click that and a menu including an option to "Open as PDF." The system will then generate a formatted PDF for saving or printing.
How do I cancel my subscription?
To cancel a subscription (or turn-off auto-renew), you can do so in Settings by following the instructions found here. You are also welcome to simply email Andrew at andrew@parqor.com an so we can cancel the subscription (or stop auto-renew) directly on your behalf.
About The Medium
Why is it called “The Medium”?
The Medium mirrors McLuhan's insight that a medium’s form—and less so its content—fundamentally shapes how we communicate and create value. As new technologies establish different "invisible groundrules," as McLuhan described them, they transform not just content delivery but the entire business of culture.
Why is The Medium back on Substack?
Substack now enables The Medium to deliver the complete picture: full video interviews, audio conversations, and traditional essays individually and collectively providing depth and context. All subscribers will now have access to an evergreen resource with deeper insights from interviews and new ways to engage with the content.
Who Is Andrew Rosen?
Andrew authors The Medium and founded PARQOR LLC. He writes Medium Shift, a monthly column on The Information tracking the transformations underway in the media business.
His analysis of the streaming marketplace has guided C-Suite executives and investors since 2015. Previously, he served as a digital media executive at Viacom (MTVN, BET).
What is PARQOR?
[How to pronounce: “Paar - kor”]
PARQOR is the mindset of revealing the potential in everyday markets, questioning established ideas and common wisdom, and reassessing the moving pieces of marketplaces.
The branding is a nod to Parkour, the practice of efficiently navigating urban environments through creative movement. PARQOR’s analyses on The Medium surface unexpected connections and patterns in familiar landscapes.
Can we hire Andrew for speaking engagements?
Yes. For the past two years, Andrew has given talks on evolving business models in media and journalism to Burda Media trainees and journalists at the Digital-Life-Design (DLD) Conference in Munich, Germany. You can also watch his impromptu talk here, delivered after an interview with then-YouTube Chief Business Office Robert Kyncl was cancelled at the last minute due to illness.
You can also listen to Andrew’s recent podcast appearances in the Articles + Appearances section.
Please email any questions or requests to andrew@parqor.com.
Join the conversation
Follow me at @aagave on X/Twitter, where I have discussions and (sometimes spirited) debates with researchers, investors and other former executives about the streaming marketplace.
