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.

The attention economy after the lockdown boom

Mark Mulligan

25 Nov 2021

Attention economy

Attention

media consumption

The attention economy is the cornerstone of all entertainment businesses. Throughout the 2010s, it just grew and grew, with more and more digital entertainment options filling consumers’ downtime. Staring out of windows and being bored at bus stops was replaced by Netflix, Fortnite, Spotify, Insta...

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Attention economy
After the lockdown boom

Mark Mulligan

November 2021

Consumer behaviour

Streaming Music

Radio

The pandemic-triggered change in everyday life resulted in a boom in entertainment consumption, which, in turn, saw growth in emerging formats as well as a temporary rebound for traditional formats. As the world starts to ease back into pre-pandemic routines, much of this newly found entertainment time will go – but the declines will not be evenl...

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Growth from transparency
Reframing the value of music through creator rights

Mark Mulligan, Keith Jopling, Srishti Das and Kriss Thakrar

November 2021

Free Report

Creators

Streaming

Business Strategy

The music industry has been through an unprecedented period of change over the past five years.Innovations in live streaming, games, user-generated content (UGC), digital art, and trading of rights represent welcome new opportunities for music creators - opportunities that will require creators to adapt in order to take full advantage.

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Tribes are the future of fandom (and that may or may not be a good thing)

Mark Mulligan

12 Nov 2021

Fandom

Tribes

Media and Marketing

At MIDiA, we spend a lot of time exploring the fan economy and how new forms of fandom are redefining media businesses. The most significant underlying dynamic is the fragmentation of fandom: the dynamic whereby we move ever further from mass-reach media, where everyone is exposed to the same conten...

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Facebook is about to disrupt itself out of existence…again

Mark Mulligan

29 Oct 2021

Meta

Facebook

metaverse

Facebook’s rebranding to Meta can be interpreted in many ways. It can be seen as: following Google / Alphabet’s lead in communicating a new chapter in its business; putting distance between the company and its most well-known app, ahead of it beginning to decline; shifting the story away from wh...

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Independent label market shares
Up on all counts

Mark Mulligan

October 2021

Spotify

Record labels

Independent labels

This report presents record label market share that is measured not just by label reported revenues, but also by separating the revenues of independent labels that are distributed by major label groups, in order to give a more precise view of how the independent sector is performing.

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Why Adele is Bond and BTS is Squid Game

Mark Mulligan

25 Oct 2021

adele

BTS

Niche

When Spotify announced that Adele had broken the record for the most streams in one day, with 19.8 million streams , the caveat was that this was true as long as you do not include all of the streams BTS had accumulated in 24 hours for ‘Butter’ in May.

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

Mark Mulligan

15 Oct 2021

adele

30

Streaming

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 flooded market that is defined by more releases than ever before, and the ‘always on’ artist w...

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

Mark Mulligan

8 Oct 2021

creator tools

Spotify

Soundbetter

On July 1st2019, 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 had let Spotify know, in no uncertain terms, that they were not going to let it compete directly ag...

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Live streamed events consumer behaviour
Q2 2021

Mark Mulligan

October 2021

live music

Music

Live video streaming

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 MIDiA’s survey came in at 22% for Q2 2021 – a sharp increase on previous quarters.

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Live streaming’s second growth phase

Mark Mulligan

6 Oct 2021

live streaming

live streamed concerts

virtual concerts

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 with tens of thousands of viewers.

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Creator TAMs: a new way to assess the creator economy

Mark Mulligan

1 Oct 2021

creator tools

Music

Business Strategy

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.

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Beatport
A modern creator tools ecosystem

Case Study

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

September 2021

Music

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Fender
The journey from a vintage icon to a driver of modern music making

Case Study

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

September 2021

Music

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Music creator tools forecast
Moving towards a hybrid future

Mark Mulligan

September 2021

Creators

Apple

Spotify

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 future, but the real momentum lies with software, sounds, services and the hardware that supports them.

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

Mark Mulligan

22 Sep 2021

Music

Business Strategy

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 $55 billion , while former-parent, Vivendi, saw a drop of two thirds in its value.

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‘Middle class’ artists need niche, not scale

Mark Mulligan

17 Sep 2021

Music

Business Strategy

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.

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The oncoming fandom crisis

Mark Mulligan

10 Sep 2021

music fans

Music fandom

Fandom

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, with two thirds of its revenues coming from non-music (i.

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Creator hubs
Creator tools’ next growth driver

Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

September 2021

Creators

Spotify

Artists

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 dynamic is underpinned by substantial institutional investment and strong market growth, the second order effect is the further fragmentation of an already congested and...

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Splice

Case Study

Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

September 2021

Music

Justin Bieber

AI

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