Mark Mulligan | MIDiA Research

Could Article 13 Kill Off Music on YouTube?

Mark Mulligan

21 Jun 2018

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 ...

Spotify’s New Rules of Engagement

Mark Mulligan

12 Jun 2018

investors

Spotify

spotify as a label

It is easy to feel that the pervasive obsession with Spotify overplays its importance to the recorded music industry. On the one hand it may only represent 27% of global recorded music revenues, but this compares to a peak of around 10% that Apple enjoyed at the peak of the iTunes Music Store.

min read

Facebook Aims to Bring The Fun Back Into Music

Mark Mulligan

5 Jun 2018

Ad Supported

dubsmash

Facebook

Facebook has announced its long mooted move into music. As widely anticipated the service offering focuses on using music to add context to social experiences. The official blog outlines two key use cases: Adding music to videosDoing live stream lip syncs in Facebook Live videos For now the roll out...

min read

Spotify’s Censorship Crisis is About Social Responsibility

Mark Mulligan

30 May 2018

curation

editorial

Facebook

Spotify has been forced into something of a rethink regarding its hate speech policy. Spotify announced it was removing music from playlists of artists that do not meet its new policy regarding hate speech and hateful behaviour.

min read

Global Music Distribution
A Buyer’s Market

Cover image for Global Music Distribution

Mark Mulligan

May 2018

Labels

Spotify

Record labels

The internet was supposed to be the great leveller, enabling smaller artists and labels to reach global audiences in a way not previously possible. But, it turns out that getting music to these global fan bases is not quite so straightforward. Smaller labels simply do not have the resources to enable them to distribute music across all territories.

Is YouTube Serious About Music Subscriptions This Time Round?

Mark Mulligan

17 May 2018

Ad Supported

Freemium

Spotify

In 2014 YouTube launched its inaugural music subscription service YouTube Music Key in beta. The following year YouTube announced it was closing it ahead of the launch of YouTube Red , a multi-format subscription video on demand (SVOD) offering, of which music was going to be sub-component.

min read

Could Spotify Buy Universal?

Mark Mulligan

11 May 2018

Alphabet

Amazon

AOL

Vivendi is reported to be proposing to its board a plan for spinning out Universal Music. It is certainly the right time for a spin off (always sell before the peak), but a full divestment would leave Vivendi unbalanced and a shell of its former self.

min read

Spotify Q1 2018 Earnings
Steady Course But Is It Enough?

Cover image for Spotify Q1 2018 Earnings

Mark Mulligan

May 2018

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

On the 2 May 2018 Spotify released its first quarterly earnings. The results fundamentally represent a continuation of the figures presented in Spotify’s F1 filing and show strong results across most performance metrics. Nonetheless, investors were not satisfied (apparently spooked by growing losses), resulting in a dip in Spotify’s stock price.

Spotify Q1 2018 Results: Full Stream Ahead

Mark Mulligan

2 May 2018

Spotify

Spotify earnings

spotify earnings q1 2018

Spotify released its first ever quarterly earnings results today. The results reflect strong performance in its first public quarter with growth in subscribers, total users, revenue and also gross profit.

min read

Sweden Might Just Have Shown Us What the Future of Music Revenues Will Look Like

Mark Mulligan

27 Apr 2018

Earlier this week the IFPI released its Global Music Report – an essential tool for anyone with a serious interest in the global recorded music business. One interesting trend to emerge was the slowdown in Swedish streaming growth and its knock-on effect on overall recorded music revenues.

min read

Global Recorded Music Revenues Grew By $1.4 Billion in 2017

Mark Mulligan

19 Apr 2018

2017 was a stellar year for the recorded music business. Global recorded music revenues reached $17.4 billion in 2017 in trade values, up from $16 billion in 2016, an annual growth rate of 8.5%. That $1.

min read

Facebook Might Just Have Done YouTube a Massive Favour

Mark Mulligan

13 Apr 2018

content id

Facebook

fair use

The word on the street is that the deals labels have struck with Facebook for its forthcoming music service have been done on a blanket license basis (i.e. a flat fee) with no reporting. This was reported by Music Business Worldwide and has been confirmed to me by various well-placed third parties: ...

min read

Recorded Music Market 2017
Streaming Accelerating Growth

Cover image for Recorded Music Market 2017

Mark Mulligan

April 2018

music sales

Streaming

Streaming Music

Recorded music revenues are booming and the distribution end of the value chain is both vibrant and competitive. This has not been the case for many, many years. Streaming is on course to become the main revenue source, while the slowdown in legacy format decline is enabling that growth to lift the overall market at a greater rate.

Making and Marketing an Artist
Streaming Rewrites the Rules, Again

Cover image for Making and Marketing an Artist

Mark Mulligan

April 2018

Labels

Streaming

Streaming Music

Marketing is one of the core competencies of record labels. The rise of the internet and social media transformed label marketing strategies. Now streaming is turning everything upside down again. The new challenge this time round is that streaming is both a marketing tool and a revenue source.

Spotify D(PO)-Day

Mark Mulligan

3 Apr 2018

DPO

IPO

Spotify

Arguably the most anticipated day in the history of digital music is upon us. By the end of it we will have the first hint at whether Spotify is going to fall at the Snap Inc. or Facebook end of the spectrum of promising tech IPO, or DPO in the case of Spotify.

min read

Spotify by the Numbers
Trials, Churn and Margin

Mark Mulligan

March 2018

Apple

Spotify

This report presents analysis of Spotify’s key performance metrics as presented in the F1 filing in advance of its direct listing. The report focuses on business performance metrics, such as user acquisition and retention, user engagement and user spend.

The Spotify Numbers You Won’t Have Seen

Mark Mulligan

23 Mar 2018

Spotify

Spotify dpo

spotify IPO

One of the core values that we deliver to our clients at MIDiA Research is finding the ‘third number’— the data point that wasn’t reported by a company but that can be arrived at through a process of modelling and triangulation.

min read

The Narrative Of Spotify’s Filing Is That The Best Is Yet To Come

Mark Mulligan

28 Feb 2018

Ad Supported

Spotify

Spotify dpo

Spotify just filed its F1 for its DPO. The most anticipated business event in the recorded music industry since, well…as long as most can remember, is one big step closer. The filing is a treasure trove of data and metrics, and while there won’t be too many surprisesfor anyone who follows the co...

min read