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.

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Live streamed concert demand
Ready for prime time

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin and Kriss Thakrar

21 May 2021

Spotify Spotify live music

Virtual concerts went from zero to a hundred at an unprecedented rate during the pandemic-shaped 2020, and the momentum carried through to 2021. But if lockdown years are like dog years, then so too the evolution of the current virtual event marketplace has been concertinaed.

Hi-Res audio: It’s all about a maturing market

Mark Mulligan

21 May 2021

Streaming hi res audio Dolby Atmos

Apple and Amazon made a splash this week by integrating Hi-Res Dolby Atmos audio into the basic tiers of their streaming services . The timing, i.e. just after Spotify started increasing prices, is – how shall we put it, interesting .

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Podcast audiences
Competing for attention

Mark Mulligan

20 May 2021

US UK France

2020 was a big year for podcasts, with increased investment, M&A activity and industry moves. Audiences grew too, but still lag behind in hype and expectation, and a portion of this growth has come at the direct expense of music streaming and radio.

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BTS
BTS hit big with the most successful virtual concert yet

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin and Kriss Thakrar

15 May 2021

Music concerts BTS

BTS are the best selling artist of 2020, and their label, Big Hit Music, deserves credit for the innovations they have championed in driving fandom – particularlywith virtual concerts. Map of the Soul: ON:E is the most successful virtual concertyet, selling 993,000 tickets and earning $35 million in revenue.

Growth drivers – what comes after streaming

Mark Mulligan

7 May 2021

Streaming growth drivers fitness

The pandemic-defined 2020 was an outlier year across digital entertainment, with the extra 12% of time consumers spent with entertainment boosting everything, including music. One of the effects was that streaming grew more than it would have otherwise, delaying the inevitable slowdown in streaming ...

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Spotify pushes prices up, but do not expect dramatic effects

Mark Mulligan

27 Apr 2021

Spotify spotify pricing streaming pricing

Spotify finally announced a significant price increase, raising prices in the UK and some of Europe, with the US set to follow suit. The increases affect Family, Duo and Student plans. The fact that streaming pricing has remained locked at $9.

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Creator culture
The song becomes the feed

Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

26 Apr 2021

Creators Spotify Spotify

The creator tools marketplace is creating a revolution in the culture and business of music. The third decade of the millennium represents the opening of a new chapter for the music business, with the means of production and distribution fully democratised.

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Rebalancing the Song Economy

Mark Mulligan and Keith Jopling

16 Apr 2021

Free Report

Music

Introduction – Rebalancing the song economy After half a decade of streaming-driven growth the global music business hit a speed bump in the shape of the COVID-19 pandemic. Live music stopped in an instant, radio boomed then dipped and physical sales plummeted as stores closed.

The music industry’s centre of gravity is shifting

Mark Mulligan

16 Apr 2021

creator tools music industry investment music investment

Regular readers will know that MIDiA has been analysing the creator tool space for some time now and building the case for why the changes that are taking place will be transformational not just for the creator tools space itself but for the music business as a whole.

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Music & Gaming
A new way to play

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin and Keith Jopling

13 Apr 2021

Free Report

In today’s music business, the consumer boom is rapidly leading to a creator bust. For the music industry to untangle itself from this dysfunctional loop, it needs to find new ways of monetizing fandom, not simply relying on consumption. Artists need new ways to connect and transact more productively with their immediate fan bases.

Assessing the streaming opportunity: You’re doing it wrong

Mark Mulligan

9 Apr 2021

TAM SAM SOM

Buoyed by lockdown, streaming enjoyed another strong year in 2020, up 17.1% on 2019 according to MIDiA’s recorded music market shares report . But the revenue slowdown will come in 2021, driven by the maturation of the big music markets (e.

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Creator tools platforms could become social networks

Mark Mulligan

31 Mar 2021

Music Product Strategy

With all the growing interest and investment in creator tools companies, music production platform Bandlab hitting 30 million users points to a longer-term future for the space – one in which the boundaries spread far beyond the base of music makers.

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IFPI confirms global recorded music revenue growth

Mark Mulligan

23 Mar 2021

Music Business Strategy

Last week MIDiA reported that recorded music revenues grew by 7% in 2020. Today the IFPI confirmed that figure, reporting 7.4% growth. (Similarly, the IFPI reported 19.9% growth for streaming, MIDiA had 19.

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Recorded music revenues hit $23.1 billion in 2020, with artists direct the winners – again

Mark Mulligan

15 Mar 2021

Recorded music revenue 2020 musc revenues 2020 label market shares 2020

The global pandemic caused widespread disruption to the music business, in particular decimating the live business and impacting publisher public performance royalties. Although the recorded music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industr...

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Entertainment fandom
Monetise fandom, not attention

Mark Mulligan

12 Mar 2021

music fans Fandom Twitch

In the attention economy, entertainment consumption is intertwined and competition straddles formats and genres. The same applies to fandom. Entertainment fans are fans of not just multiple subgenres within one entertainment category, but instead across multiple entertainment formats.

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Recorded music market 2020
Pandemic-era growth

Mark Mulligan

11 Mar 2021

Streaming Streaming Music Recorded music

The global pandemic turned the music industry upside down. While live was decimated throughout 2020, after an initial downturn, the recorded music market returned to growth and finished the year with an acceleration that suggests a strong 2021 lies ahead.

Native Instruments and iZotope: creator tools major in the making

Mark Mulligan

11 Mar 2021

Music Business Strategy

At the start of the year private equity firm Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in creator tools stalwart Native Instruments. It always looked like it was going to be the start of something big and today we saw the next step on Native’s new journey, with leading audio plugin company iZot...

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The music business in 2021: Joining the dots

Mark Mulligan

4 Mar 2021

Music Cultural trends

It has been one of those weeks, with impactful music business announcements coming thick and fast. As is often the case, a succession of apparently unrelated events actually have a connecting thread. In this instance there are three: 1.

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Smaller independents and artists direct grew fastest in 2020

Mark Mulligan

1 Mar 2021

Spotify Streaming Music Independent labels

Last year we identified a small but crucial metric from Spotify’s annual report: the share of all streams accounted for by majors and independent licensing body Merlin. It was crucial because it enabled us to segment the streaming market in detail, when combined with market data from majors and in...

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Spotify Q4 2020 earnings
ARPU pays the price for growth

Mark Mulligan

28 Feb 2021

Subscriptions Streaming Streaming Music

In 2020 Spotify accelerated the growth of its total user base, with emerging markets playing a key role. However, revenue increases became decoupled from user growth across all categories, resulting in ARPU deflation. Companies and brands mentioned in...

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