Mark Mulligan

Mark Mulligan is a music analyst and the founder at MIDiA Research. He is a long-term tech analyst and a leading digital thinker with more than 20 years of experience, working with leading global music, entertainment, and tech companies. At MIDiA, Mark focuses on the streaming and creator economies, as well as music business trends and market metrics such as forecasts and market shares.

Cover image for All eyes, no ears

All eyes, no ears
Why virality is not building fandom

Mark Mulligan, Hanna Kahlert, Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Olivia Jones
Free Report
Music discovery Business Strategy
Over the last five years, labels and artists have invested in social media, betting that a steady stream of artist content and influencer campaigns will engineer virality. The theory is simple: virality leads to streams, streams lead to fandom, and fandom leads to long-term, sustainable artist careers.
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Cover image for MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music publishing forecasts

MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music publishing forecasts
A changing market

Mark Mulligan
Music creators Music creators Music publishing
Throughout the 2020s the music publishing market has outperformed that of the labels, though total revenues remain significantly smaller. The origins of this disparity lie in streaming royalty splits but publishers and CMOs have fought hard to increase their share and to start from a better position with the emerging formats that will shape tomorro...
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Cover image for MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music forecasts

MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music forecasts
Recalibration

Mark Mulligan, Tatiana Cirisano, Perry Gresham and Mark Qi
Global Business Strategy global music forecasts
This report presents the key figures, trends, and drivers of MIDiA’s music forecast model. The figures presented in this report are both retail and label trade values, and they are in billions of US dollars – unless otherwise stated. An Excel file posted alongside this report provides complete country-level data, including DSP market shares and...
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Cultural movements
A new take on mainstream for the fragmentation era

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano
Entertainment mainstream Cultural trends
Entertainment has become nichified, mainstream has become smaller, and audiences have fragmented. While this has been crucial to the rise of the long tail and the creator economy, there is a need for a new, fragmentation-era successor to mainstream. Building upon MIDiA’s work on scenes, in this report we make the case for cultural movements, the ...
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Cover image for How Charli XCX leveraged the hyperpop scene into a global movement

How Charli XCX leveraged the hyperpop scene into a global movement

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano
Labels Streaming US
Hyperpop music emerged in the 2010s, led by producer A.G. Cook, his record label PC Music, and its particular style of exaggerated, self-referential pop. From the start, though, hyperpop was always more than a music genre. It was catalysed by backlash to consumerism and late-stage capitalism, which shaped everything from the sound of the music to t...
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