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.

Why Music and Video are Crucial to Apple’s Future

Mark Mulligan

7 Jan 2019

Amazon Prime apple earnings comes with music

Apple’s downgraded earnings guidance represents its first profit warning in 10 years. This is clearly a big deal, and probably not as much to do with a weakening Chinese economy ifAlibaba’s 2018 Singles’ Day annual growth of 23% is anything to go by.

How YouTube’s Domination of Streaming Clips the Market’s Wings

Mark Mulligan

3 Jan 2019

Ad Supported ad supported arpu ad supported streaming

Firstly, happy new year to you all. Now on to the first post of 2019. The Article 13 debate that shaped so much of the latter part of 2018 will continue to play an important role throughout 2019 while European and then national legislators deliberate on the provision and the wider Digital Copyright ...

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Artists Direct and Streaming the Big Winners in 2018

Mark Mulligan

18 Dec 2018

2018 music revenues 2019 Recorded music revenue Artists direct

With less than two weeks of 2018 left, the die is largely cast for the year, but we’ll have to wait at least a couple more months for the major labels to announce their results (though WMG still hasn’t declared its calendar Q3 results), and then another month or so for the IFPI numbers.

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Soon to be the Biggest Ever YouTube Channel, T-Series May Also Be About to Reshape Global Culture

Mark Mulligan

13 Dec 2018

Media and Marketing

Some time over the next month or so aYouTube landmark will bepassed: T-Series will pass PewDiePie as the most subscribed YouTube channel on the planet .As of time of writing T-Series had 75.4 million subscribers compared to PewDiePie’s 76.

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5G: Use Cases, Hurdles and Opportunity

Mark Mulligan

12 Dec 2018

Amazon telco mobile carriers

5G promises to be the next big step change both in telco business models and the digital content economy. The arrival of 5G will supercharge the business models of many companies across infrastructure and services but the outlook is less promising for others who are at risk of having their core revenue streams disrupted.

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Music Consumer Behaviour Q3 2018
YouTube Leads the Way But At What Cost?

Mark Mulligan

6 Dec 2018

Apple Spotify YouTube

This report presents music consumption data for Q3 2018, with consumer data for US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon, Amazon Prime Music, Amazon Music Unlimited,...

Independent Labels Grew Global Market Share to 39.9% in 2017

Mark Mulligan

4 Dec 2018

Media and Marketing

The global independent label trade body WIN has just published the third edition of the Worldwide Independent Market report. You can download the entire report for free here. As regular readers will know, MIDiA Research has conducted this study on behalf of WIN for each of the three editions, collec...

Taylor Swift, Label Services and What Comes Next

Mark Mulligan

22 Nov 2018

#MERKY ADA Billy Bragg

Taylor Swift has done it again, striking a deal with UMG that includes a commitment from the world’s largest label group to share proceeds from Spotify stock sales with artists, even if they are not recouped (ie haven’t generated enough revenue to have paid off the balance on their advance so no...

MIDiA Research Welcomes Veteran Telco Analyst Paolo Pescatore To Team

Mark Mulligan

16 Nov 2018

MIDiA Analyst Team MIDiA Research Paolo Pescatore

I am very pleased to announce that seasoned and respected analyst Paolo Pescatore is joining MIDiA’s analyst team, to head up our new Telco Consumer Services research stream. Paolo has spent the last 20 years covering telecoms, media and technology (TMT) research and advising leading telcos and te...

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The Meta Trends that Will Shape 2019

Mark Mulligan

16 Nov 2018

2019 forecast 2019 tech and media predictions AI

MIDiA has just published its annual predictions report . Here are a few highlights. 2018 was another year of change, disruption and transformation across media and technology. Although hyped technologies – VR, blockchain, AI music – failed to meet inflated expectations, concepts such as privacy,...

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MIDiA Research Predictions 2019

Alistair Taylor, Georgia Meyer, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

8 Nov 2018

Apple Spotify YouTube

In this report MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech, across music, video, media, brands, marketing, games and sports in 2019. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: ABC, Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Amazon Prime Video, Apple, Apple Music, AT&T, BBC, BT, BT Sports, BT T...

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Spotify Q3 2018 Earnings
Metrics on Track But Investors Not Convinced

Mark Mulligan

6 Nov 2018

Subscriptions Streaming Streaming Music

Spotify’s Q3 2018 earnings once again showed continued solid progress across most of its performance metrics, with strong progress in many areas. However, weakening investor confidence across US tech stocks as a whole, coupled perhaps unrealistic investor expectations saw Spotify’s share price fall again.

Can Spotify Ever Meet Investors’ Expectations?

Mark Mulligan

1 Nov 2018

Netflix Record labels Spotify

Spotify just posted another solid set of results, adding four million subscribers and beating profit and revenue estimates, yet its share price fell. What’s going on? Spotify is on track for where it should be, slightly below, but on track.

Guess Which is The Leading Headphone Brand?

Mark Mulligan

1 Nov 2018

Headphones have been centre stage of the digital music market since the launch of the iPod in 2001. Portable music started more than two decades earlier with Sony’s Walkman, but it was digital’s ability to fill a device with catalogues of music, rather than just one album that empowered music li...

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Radio 2018
Streaming’s Continuing Impact

Mark Mulligan

31 Oct 2018

Streaming Streaming Music Spotify

This is a 2018 update to MIDiA’s 2017 report exploring the impact of streaming on radio audiences. The underlying data comes from MIDiA’s quarterly consumer tracker which was first fielded in Q4 2016. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: 2GB, 702 ABC, AdsWizz, BBC, BOOM-FM, CBC Radio One, CBC Radio Two, CHFI-FM, CHUM-FM, Capital FM, D...

Spotify May Already Be Too Big for the Labels to Stop it Competing With Them

Mark Mulligan

26 Oct 2018

Artists direct independent record labels indie labels

Spotify’s Daniel Ek is betting big on developing a ‘two sided marketplace’ for music . With the company’s market cap on a downward trend despite strong growth metrics , Ek might find himself having to play up the disruption narrative more boldly and more quickly than he’d planned.

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Consumer Demand for Music Streaming Subscription Services

Mark Mulligan

19 Oct 2018

subscription services paid subscriptions Streaming music subscriptions

This slide deck highlights consumer demand for music subscription services and preferred features, with detail for sub segments such as country, age, streaming service and music genre. The data is pulled from MIDiA’s Q1 2018 Consumer Survey fielded in US, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Sweden, Germany and the UK.

Spotify, DistroKid and the Two Sided Marketplace

Mark Mulligan

17 Oct 2018

DistroKid Spotify spotify as a label

Spotify has taken a minority stake in DistroKid . In itself, it may be a slightly left field but relatively insignificant move, except that it is in fact one small but important step on a much bigger journey.

Event Postponed

Mark Mulligan

17 Oct 2018

Just to confirm that tonight's MIDiA Event is not taking place. The event has been postponed and we will announce the new date shortly.

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Speaker Market Shares
Amazon Ahead in a Crowded Market

Mark Mulligan

16 Oct 2018

Subscriptions Streaming Music Subscriptions

Digital music pushed music out of the home speaker and into the earphone. Over recent years this has created a booming market for headphones but speakers are fighting back, driven in large part by tech majors using smart speakers as a Trojan horse for expanding into the home.

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