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 Entertainment
Measuring Music's Place

Mark Mulligan

24 Feb 2017

Streaming Music Spotify live music

The live music industry has always had a slightly incongruous relationship with its recorded music industry cousin. Often having to tolerate the record labels’ business being called ‘the music industry’ and equally often, finding itself at the focus of consumer discontent over ticketing practices.

Four Companies That Could Buy Spotify

Mark Mulligan

15 Feb 2017

21st Century Fox Alibaba amc theatres

For much of 2016 it looked nailed on that Spotify would IPO in 2017 and that the recorded music industry would move onto its next chapter, for better or for worse. The terms of Spotify’s $1 billion debt raise (which mean that Spotify pays an extra 1% on its 5% annual interest payments every six mo...

Change Is Afoot In Music Video

Mark Mulligan

9 Feb 2017

Facebook facebook music strategy Google

Music video’s two power players are both in the news for strategic resets. On the one hand YouTube has announced that it is mergingits YouTube Music and Google Play Music team s while on the other hand Vevo has announced it is postponing the launch of its subscription service in favour of prioriti...

Streaming Music Pricing: Inelastic Stretching

Mark Mulligan

7 Feb 2017

music pricing music subscribers Music Subscriptions

Pricing has long been an issue for streaming music subscriptions, with the $/€/£ 9.99 price point above what most people spend on music each month. Streaming services have navigated around the issue with a combination of tactics such as telco bundles and aggressive price discounts (e.

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Streaming Music Pricing
Inelastic Stretching

Mark Mulligan

1 Feb 2017

Streaming Streaming Music streaming subscriptions

Pricing has long been an issue for streaming music subscriptions, with the $9.99 price point having the double challenge of reducing the spending of the most valuable music buyers and being higher than the average spend of most music buyers. Streaming services have worked around the issue with a combination of telco music bundles and aggressive pri...

Why Netflix Can Turn A Profit But Spotify Cannot (Yet)

Mark Mulligan

19 Jan 2017

Content strategy Netflix Netflix originals

Having just celebrated its 10 th (streaming) birthday, Netflix followed up with a strong earnings release, announcing 5.8 million net new paid subscribers in Q4 , sending its share price up by 9%. This wraps up a stellar year for Netflix, one in which it doubled down on original programming and deli...

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Announcing MIDiA’s New Research Practice: Paid Content

Mark Mulligan

11 Jan 2017

conversion Digital Media Strategy facebook strategy

We are proud to announce the launch of MIDiA’s latest research practice: Paid Content. We’ve been working on this service for the past 9 months and it is headed up by our Paid Content analyst Zach Fuller.

Introducing MIDiA's Streaming Music Health Check

Mark Mulligan

10 Jan 2017

2nd quarter 2016 curation digital music

We are pleased to announce the arrival of the following MIDiA report on our report store: 'Streaming Music Health Check: Streaming’s Watershed Moment'. You can purchase the report here. MIDiA Research subscription clients already have full access.

Music Subscriptions Passed 100 Million In December. Has The World Changed?

Mark Mulligan

6 Jan 2017

Amazon Amazon Prime Music Apple Music

In streaming’s earlier years, when doubts prevailed across the artist, songwriter and label communities, one of the arguments put forward by enthusiasts was that when streaming reached scale everything would make sense.

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Facebook The Media Company: If It Looks Like A Duck

Mark Mulligan

22 Dec 2016

Facebook Facebook Media Company facebook media strategy

Yesterday Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally confirmed that Facebook is a media company , not a traditional one, but a media company nonetheless. This is something we've been thinking about a lot at MIDiA, so much so in fact that we have just publishedan entire report on the subject: "Facebook T...

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Next Steps For Telco Music
The Revenue Or User Dilemma

Mark Mulligan

22 Dec 2016

Streaming Music Music Subscriptions music bundles

Streaming’s early fortunes were intimately tied to telco music strategy, with the streaming services eager to piggy back telcos’ much larger marketing budgets and telcos equally keen to pursue marketplace differentiation and brand kudos. Telco music bundles are delivering more revenue and users than ever before but their relative role in the st...

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Facebook The Media Company
If It Looks Like A Duck

Mark Mulligan

21 Dec 2016

Paid Content Facebook Content strategy

Facebook beat financial analyst estimates with its Q3 2016 earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017, due to the digital ad market feeling the pinch of advertiser budgets, which are lagging behind the shift in user behaviour. Facebook’s stock fell by 7% but Plan B is already in motion: to become a media company.

Experience Should Be Everything In 2017

Mark Mulligan

16 Dec 2016

Apple Music Deezer design

2017 is going to be a big year for streaming. Spotify will likely IPO, paid subscribers will pass the 100 million mark in Q1, playlists will boom. 2017will build upon an upbeat 2016 in which the major labels saw streaming drive total revenue growth.

MIDiA Research Predictions 2017: The Year Of The Platform

Mark Mulligan

13 Dec 2016

Access Industries Alphabet Amazon

Following an 84% success rate for our 2016 Predictions report, we today launch our 2017 predictions report: ‘ MIDiA Research Predictions 2017: The Year Of The Platform’. The report is immediately available to all MIDiA subscription clients and can also be purchased for individual download from o...

YouTube Reaches $4bn In Music Industry Rights Payments

Mark Mulligan

6 Dec 2016

music rights Music Royalties Online video

YouTube just reported that it has paid $1 billion to ‘the music industry’ over the course of the last 12 months. That takes its cumulative payments (since 2007) up to $4 billion. The year-to-date payments for $900 million are a 22% on the full year payments made in 2015 – the year in which lab...

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MIDiA Research Predictions 2017
The Year Of The Platform

Karol Severin, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

30 Nov 2016

Streaming Streaming Music Paid Content

As we correctly predicted, 2016 was the year video ate the world. 2017 is going to be shaped by the battle for consumer attention through formatting and distribution wars. VR is likely to cede further ground to AR, bots will become established, while messaging apps add to their dominant position (even though user growth will slow).

Black Friday Offer: Free MIDiA VR Report

Mark Mulligan

25 Nov 2016

Free MIDiA Report free report Free VR Report

Shamelessly jumping on the Black Friday bandwagon we have a great offer for you: sign up to the MIDiA weekly research briefing newslettertoday and get a free 18 page VR report: 'The State Of The VR Nation'.

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We're Hiring!

Mark Mulligan

23 Nov 2016

Careers Jobs MIDiA Research

We'vebeen fortunate enough to have had a good 2016 at MIDiA Research and we're now planning for an even better 2017. To this end we're hiring for two new positions in our London office: Production Manager / Content Editor Account Executive Details of these tworoles are listed below.

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MIDiA’s 2016 Predictions – Here’s How We Did

Mark Mulligan

21 Nov 2016

MIDiA Research Predictions mobile apps Mobile content

Part of our job here at MIDiA Research is to help our clients ‘look round the corner’ and see what disruptions and innovations are likely to impact their businesses. In short, our job is to help understand what the future holds.

Snapchat User Profile
Valuable, Digitally Savvy Millennials

Mark Mulligan

17 Nov 2016

digital natives apps mobile apps

Snapchat represents the Millennial zeitgeist more than any other single app. It continues to engage digitally native young audiences just as much as it appeals to traditional media brands, such as Viacom and CBS, desperate to reach young audiences on their own turf.

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