Mark Mulligan | MIDiA Research

Mid-Year 2018 Streaming Market Shares

Mark Mulligan

13 Sep 2018

Music subscribers grew by 16% in the first half of 2018 to reach 229.5 million, up from 198.6 million at the end of 2017. Year-on-year the global subscriber base increased by 38%, adding 62.8 million subscribers.

min read

Music Streaming Services Market Shares
H1 2018 Subscriber Share Update

Cover image for Music Streaming Services Market Shares

Mark Mulligan

September 2018

Subscriptions

Streaming

Music Subscriptions

This report provides a global level mid-year update to MIDiA’s Music Subscriber Market Shares report, presenting H1 2018 figures. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon, Amazon Prime Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple, Apple Music,...

Pandora
Mapping Its Place in the US Streaming Market

Mark Mulligan

September 2018

Streaming

Streaming Music

Apple

Pandora is the granddaddy of streaming music, clocking 10 million active users before Spotify had even gone into public beta. It remains the most widely used audio streaming service in the US, but is no longer the golden child of the space. Despite having been long positioned as the long-term future of radio, investors have become increasingly concerned about its ability to compete against Spotify, Amazon and Apple—streaming services that originally had their eyes on replacing retail rather than radio.

How Streaming is Changing the Shape of Music [Part I]

Mark Mulligan

6 Sep 2018

[This is the first of two thought pieces on how streaming is reshaping music from creation to consumption] The streaming era has arrived in the music business, but the music business has not yet fully arrived in the streaming era.

min read

Streaming Services Market Shares 2.0

Mark Mulligan

August 2018

Subscriptions

Streaming

This report includes the key findings of MIDiA’s Global Music Subscriber Market Share Model in which we present the subscribers, revenues and market shares of streaming services in more than 20 different countries. This report contains charts and analysis for 11 countries including consumer survey data, while the complete excel model is posted alongside this report.

State of the YouTube Music Economy 2.0: A Turning Point for All Parties

Mark Mulligan

24 Aug 2018

YouTube is the most widely used streaming music app globally but it is also the most controversial one, locked in a perpetual struggle with music rights holders, with neither side quite trusting the intent of the other.

min read

Tech Majors Market Shares Q2 2018

Mark Mulligan

15 Aug 2018

Alphabet

Apple

Facebook

The tech world has no shortage of acronyms for the big tech companies (GAFA, GAAF, Fang, the four horsemen…). At MIDiA we like to keep things simple, just like the major record labels and major TV studios we call the big four tech companies the Tech Majors.

min read

State of the YouTube Music Economy 2.0
A Turning Point for All Parties

Cover image for State of the YouTube Music Economy 2.0

Mark Mulligan

August 2018

Streaming

Streaming Music

Spotify

This report is now into its second edition, updating the most comprehensive YouTube music dataset ever compiled in order to present all sides of the argument in an objective and impartial manner. The report provides an exhaustive view of the market for revenues, ad rates, stream rates, users, streams and subscribers.

Emerging Music Markets: Streaming’s Third Wave

Mark Mulligan

10 Aug 2018

baidu music

China

emerging markets

MIDiA has just published a new report that deep dives into how streaming is, or in some cases is not, lifting off in emerging markets. The regions we focused on were Russia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, China and India.

min read

Are Record Labels Facing an A&R Crisis?

Mark Mulligan

30 Jul 2018

a+r crisis

ar

Labels

A succession of conversations with record labels over the last couple of months has made me start to ponder whether we are approaching a tipping point in streaming era A&R. At the heart of the conversations is whether the growing role of playlists and the increased use of streaming analytics is making label A&R strategy proactive or reactive? Is what people are listening to shaped by the labels or the streaming service? To subvert Paul Weller’s 1980s Jam lyrics: Does the public get what the public wants or does the public want what the public gets? An old dynamic reinvented Radio used to be the main way in which audiences were essentially told what to listen to.

min read

Spotify Q2 2018 Earnings
More Needed from Emerging Markets and Ad Supported

Cover image for Spotify Q2 2018 Earnings

Mark Mulligan

July 2018

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Spotify’s Q2 2018 earnings show continued solid progress across most of its performance metrics. However, investor scrutiny is intensifying, especially with the growing subscriber arms race in the US becoming — albeit incorrectly — perceived as a litmus test for global success.

What Netflix’s Missing $9 Billion Tells Us About Spotify’s Business Model

Mark Mulligan

18 Jul 2018

Media and Marketing

On Monday (July 16th), Netflix’s quarterly earnings missed targets, resulting in$9.1 billion being wiped off its market capitalisation due to twitchy investors jumping ship . To be clear, Netflix had a strong quarter, continuing to grow strongly in both the US – a much more saturated market for video subscriptions than for music – and internationally.

min read

From Ownership to Access

Mark Mulligan

10 Jul 2018

Access

Innovation

innovation disruption

Last Wednesday we held the third MIDiA Quarterly forum, exploring the shift from ownership to access across different media industries. In addition to MIDiA analyst presentations we had panellists from Sky, The Economist, Beggars Group, Reed Smith and Readly.

min read

Emerging Music Markets
Streaming’s Third Wave

Mark Mulligan

July 2018

Streaming

Streaming Music

Music Subscriptions

With streaming growth set to slow in mature western markets by 2019, the next wave of fast growth will come from a mixture of mid-tier markets such as Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Germany. Beyond that, the streaming market will need to look towards emerging markets for growth.

The Outlook for Music Catalogue: Streaming Changes Everything

Mark Mulligan

29 Jun 2018

catalogue

catalogue m&a

catalogue valuations

Friday’s news that catalogue acquisition business Hipgnosis Songs Fund is set to float on the London Stock Exchange, having already raised around $260 million, reflects a booming market for music catalogues.

min read

Quarterly Digital Content Trends: Q1 2018

Mark Mulligan

June 2018

Streaming

Streaming Music

US

In this report, we present highlights of content trends from MIDiA’s Quarterly Brand Tracker, a survey fielded in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. This report explores how consumer behaviour evolved between Q4 2016 and Q1 2018 across music, video, games and social.

Access To Ownership: MIDiA’s Free to Attend Event

Mark Mulligan

22 Jun 2018

For readers based in the UK, MIDiA Research will be hosting its third quarterly event on July 4th at The Ministry in London. The event is free to attend and we will be examining best practices for premium content monetisation across media industries and exploring the lessons learned and transferrable strategies.

min read

Could Article 13 Kill Off Music on YouTube?

Mark Mulligan

21 Jun 2018

Alphabet

article 13

European parliament

It was a day of two halves for YouTube. On one side a big press release went out championing a host of impressive new stats – including hitting 1.9 billion logged in users, following an official launch of YouTube Music the day before.

min read

Quick Take: Pandora and Snapchat Take a Swipe at Facebook

Mark Mulligan

14 Jun 2018

Innovation

Pandora

Snapchat

No sooner had the ink dried on Facebook’s new social music offering, that Snapchat fights back with a Pandora partnership built on its ‘unFacebook’ privacy centred app developer platform Snapkit.

min read

The Outlook for Music Catalogue
Streaming Changes Everything

Cover image for The Outlook for Music Catalogue

Mark Mulligan and Zach Fuller

June 2018

Spotify

Amazon

Napster

Catalogue was a real money spinner for the music industry throughout the sales era. First it underpinned the CD boom (convincing music fans to re-purchase old albums they already owned on prior formats). Then, through the emergence of the digital economy, it provided a stable respite from the volatility of declining overall revenues in the wake of P2P file sharing.