Mark Mulligan

Adele’s success will be best measured in cultural impact – not sales

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

15 Oct 2021

Adele is something of an anomaly in the modern music business, a throwback to how things used to be. These days even the biggest artists struggle to get mainstream attention for their new releases in a…

Did July 1st 2019 mark the end of Spotify’s music creator dream?

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

8 Oct 2021

On July 1st 2019, Spotify announced that it was closing its system that allowed artists to upload their music directly to Spotify . The move came in the wake of fierce opposition from record labels who…

Live streamed events consumer behaviour
Q2 2021

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Report by Mark Mulligan

7 Oct 2021

£3,000.00

This report looks at live stream audience data and audience behaviour trends with regards to live streamed events. Methodological notes: The Brazil self-reported, live streamed penetration rate from…

Live streaming’s second growth phase

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

6 Oct 2021

Live streaming erupted in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic. As the year progressed, the market transformed rapidly from a bunch of bands playing guitar in their bedrooms to highly produced, ticketed shows…

Creator TAMs: a new way to assess the creator economy

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

1 Oct 2021

The music creator tools space is undergoing a change that is simultaneously renaissance and transformation. The creator culture boom has driven an unprecedented degree of investment and investor interest.…

Music creator tools forecast
Moving towards a hybrid future

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Report by Mark Mulligan

24 Sep 2021

£5,000.00

Once upon a time, music software and hardware were distinct market segments, but now they are increasingly fusing into a network of hybrid creator tools ecosystems. Standalone hardware still has a vibrant…

UMG’s buoyant stock debut is a new chapter for the music business

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

22 Sep 2021

Universal Music Group (UMG) had an extremely positive first day of trading as a standalone entity, with shares at one stage trading 35% up from their reference point and making the market cap leap to…

‘Middle class’ artists need niche, not scale

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

17 Sep 2021

Streaming continues to grow strongly, as evidenced by the 28% growth reported by the RIAA for H1 2021 in the US . Everything looks great for the build-up to the impeding Universal Music Group (UMG) IPO.…

The oncoming fandom crisis

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

10 Sep 2021

The Chinese authorities’ crackdown on fandom represents the first major growing pain for the global fandom economy. Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) will likely be the bellwether of this shift, …

Creator hubs
Creator tools’ next growth driver

Report by Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

7 Sep 2021

£3,000.00

The 20,000 foot view: The emerging competitive dynamic between insurgents and incumbents is the catalyst for an unprecedented period of innovation in the music creator tools space. However, because this…

Kanye just obliterated the creative full stop

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

3 Sep 2021

Kanye West knows how to stir things up, not least in making us rethink what music is and nudging us away from considering it as linear and static. First there was his announcement that Life of Pablo was…

Can Spotify break out of its lane?

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

13 Aug 2021

After years of relative stability, music consumption is shifting, with the DSP streaming model beginning to lose some ground as illustrated by the major labels growing streaming revenue by 33% in Q2 2021…

Spotify Q2 2021 earnings
Slowdown arrives

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Report by Mark Mulligan

11 Aug 2021

£3,000.00

The growth headwinds that appeared in Q1 2021 manifested in a pronounced user growth slowdown in Q2, with ad-supported users hit hardest. Spotify has been through lean growth periods before, but what…

MIDiA is recruiting for a Business Development Manager

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

9 Aug 2021

Building on our continued success in 2021, MIDiA is recruiting for a new Business Development Manager. The successful candidate in this role will lead MIDiA’s commercial activities across video and games,…

The record labels are weaning themselves off their Spotify dependency

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

6 Aug 2021

The major labels had a spectacular streaming quarter, registering 33% growth on Q2 2020 to reach $3.1 billion. Spotify had a less impressive quarter, growing revenues by just 23%. After being the industry’s…

Labels are going to become more like VCs than they probably want to be

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

30 Jul 2021

When you are in the midst of change it can be hard to actually see it. Right now, the music business is undergoing a consumption paradigm shift that is changing the culture and business of music. Streaming…

Addressable creator markets
An opportunity with many layers

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Report by Mark Mulligan

29 Jul 2021

£4,000.00

The music creator tools space is undergoing a change that is simultaneously renaissance and transformation. The creator culture boom has driven an unprecedented degree of investment and investor interest.…

Spotify and music listening 10 years from now

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

23 Jul 2021

July marks ten years since Spotify’s US launch. Although the tendency among some is to consider this ‘year zero’ for streaming (thus ignoring everything that had happened in prior years both within…

Music consumer survey Q1 2021
YouTube extends its reach

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Report by Mark Mulligan

20 Jul 2021

£3,000.00

The data in this report is taken from MIDiA’s Q1 2021 consumer survey. The full data from this survey and all the preceding quarterly surveys are available, along with data visualisation tools and…

Global music subscriber market shares Q1 2021

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

9 Jul 2021

The music industry’s growing obsession with declining ARPU will continue to colour the outlook for the global streaming market in revenue terms, but the positive driver of this equation is the rapid…