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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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...

Clubhouse session: Is attention killing culture?

Mark Mulligan

24 Feb 2021

Media and Marketing Cultural trends

Join myself, Hanna Kahlert and Karol Severin Thursday 25that 5pm GMT / noon EST / 9am PT on Clubhouse for discussion of the Attention Economy’s second order effects on culture and creativity. In this session we will be exploring how the focus on capturing audiences’ time and attention at all cos...

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The COVID bounce and the coming attention recession

Mark Mulligan

19 Feb 2021

media consumption entertainment consumption Audiobooks

2020 was by any measure a unique year in modern times. While the societal impact of the pandemic was, and continues to be, horrific, for the entertainment industries it was a year of plenty. At the start of the pandemic, MIDiA Research estimated that there would be an extra 15% of consumption time f...

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Last call for the global independent label survey

Mark Mulligan

18 Feb 2021

Independent label survey label survey Independent labels

With 2020 now comfortably behind us and public companies in their earnings cycle, a clear picture is starting to emerge of how the global recorded music market performed. MIDiA is midway through fielding the global independent label survey that will help create the definitive view of how the indepen...

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Three trends that will shape the rest of 2021, and beyond

Mark Mulligan

15 Feb 2021

the immersive web entertainment internets Insurgents

Late last year, MIDiA published its latest predictions report (clients can read the entire report here). The central theme was the Immersive Web, which we summarised as follows: “The immersive web is characterised by environments in which we do not simply conduct extensions of in-real-life activit...

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Media consumption
Lockdown’s attention boom

Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2021

Consumer behaviour Spotify Spotify

2020 was a year like no other. With large swathes of the population confined to their homes for portions of the year, audiences had more time on their hands and more money in their pockets. These conditions created a boom in entertainment consumption, throwing up a mixture of intuitive trends and unexpected winners.

Sony just became (even more of) an independent powerhouse

Mark Mulligan

1 Feb 2021

AWAL Kobalt Sony Music

Sony Music has bought AWAL (and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights) from Kobalt for $430 million . By adding AWAL to its already-booming Orchard division (as well as other distribution companies), it now has leading brands for independent artists as well as independent labels.

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Equitable remuneration, artist income and unintended consequences

Mark Mulligan

29 Jan 2021

Streaming economy streaming inquiry equitable remuneration

The UK Parliament’s inquiry on the economics of streaming appears to be building a case for equitable remuneration (ER). There are many iterations of what ER can mean, but a simplified description of what is in play here is: a share of streaming revenue being paid directly by the DSPs to an entity...

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Music Product Strategy Re-boot
Time to Monetise Fandom, Not Access

Mark Mulligan

25 Jan 2021

Innovation Spotify Spotify

As streaming reaches maturity in many of the largest music markets and middle-tier artists struggle to make ends meet with the live music hiatus, the time has come for a music product strategy re-boot – for a bold, new wave of music products that look to build beyond streaming, delivering increased income for both rights holders and creators.

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Splash / Tones and I
Splash / Tones and I event showcases the future of artist-fan engagement

Mark Mulligan

25 Jan 2021

Music Sony Music lil nas x

With more than 150 million monthly active users, and most of those very young, Roblox has carved out for itself an important and highly targeted youth audience. The extensible nature of the platform means that it supports multiple games worlds rather than a uniform gaming environment.

Music has developed an attention dependency

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2021

Music

The attention economy defines and shapes today’s digital world. However, we have long since reached peak in the attention economy with all available free time now addressed. What this means is that previously, when digital entertainment propositions grew, they were often using up users’ free tim...

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Virtual concerts: A new video format

Mark Mulligan

8 Jan 2021

The global pandemic thrust the live music sector into chaos, with global revenues falling by 75% in 2020 compared to one year previously. The music industry was rocked by first-order impacts (no concerts, no fan engagement) and second-order impacts (many artists realising that streaming did not add ...

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Virtual Concerts
A New Video Format

Mark Mulligan

22 Dec 2020

YouTube Amazon Facebook

The global pandemic thrust the live music sector into chaos, with global revenues falling by 75% in 2020 compared to one year previously. The music industry was rocked by first-order impacts (no concerts, no fan engagement) and second-order impacts (many artists realising that streaming did not add up without live income alongside it).

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Driift
Driift creates a new vertically integrated approach to live performances

Mark Mulligan

22 Dec 2020

live music Music Product Strategy

Founded in 2020, UK-based Driift was set up to capitalise on and drive the newopportunities that were presented by lockdown’s cessation of live music concerts.Spun out of artist agency ATC, Driift takes an artist-centric approach, with a core focus on high-production values and ticketed events with ticketing partner Dice.

2021 Predictions: The year of the immersive web

Mark Mulligan

18 Dec 2020

As we approach the end of 2020 it is time to look forward to what 2021 may bring. MIDiA has published the fifth edition of our Annual Predictions report which clients can read here . There are 27 predictions in the report, but I am sharing a few of them here.

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Global independent label survey

Mark Mulligan

14 Dec 2020

Music

MIDiA Research is conducting a major study of independent label revenue in order to create a definitive review of the independent sector’s contribution to the global music market. MIDiA conducted this work for a number of years on behalf of the Worldwide Independent Network and is now independentl...

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