Recent years witnessed much broader use of Brillouin inelastic light scattering spectroscopy for the investigation of phonons and magnons in novel materials, nanostructures, and devices. Driven by developments in instrumentation and the strong need for accurate knowledge of energies of elemental excitations, the Brillouin - Mandelstam spectroscopy is rapidly becoming an essential technique, complementary to the Raman inelastic light scattering spectroscopy. We provide an overview of recent progress in the Brillouin light scattering technique, focusing on the use of this photonic method for the investigation of confined acoustic phonons, phononic metamaterials, magnon propagation and scattering. The Review emphasizes emerging applications of the Brillouin - Mandelstam spectroscopy for phonon engineered structures and spintronic devices and concludes with a perspective for future directions.
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