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.

MIDiA Chart Of The Week: 9.99 Subscriptions At Saturation Point?

Mark Mulligan

18 Apr 2016

Streaming music had a good year in 2015, growing by 45%. Nonetheless when the IFPI announced the numbers much of the record labels’ attention focused on the role of free and especially that of YouTube and its perceived ‘value gap’ i.

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Chart Of The Week: Facebook Video

Mark Mulligan

10 Apr 2016

Chart Of The Week Facebook video Online video

Facebook and YouTube have a lot in common. They both have in excess of a billion users, both have become part of the internet furniture and both have transitioned from disruptive challenger to incumbent.

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State Of The Streaming Nation

Mark Mulligan

5 Apr 2016

Apple Music Deezer emerging markets

We are proud to announce a landmark MIDiA report: State Of The Streaming Nation: A Comprehensive Assessment Of The Global Streaming Music Market . If you are in any way involved with the streaming music market this report is an absolute must.

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Chart Of The Week: More Than Half Of App Users Enable Push Notifications

Mark Mulligan

4 Apr 2016

Accengage App Boy Chart Of The Week

Convincing mobile app users to opt-in for push notifications is the first challenge in implementing a successful push notification strategy. Based on data collected by MIDiA from 5 leading vendors 53% app users enable notifications.

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Don't Write Pandora Off Just Yet

Mark Mulligan

29 Mar 2016

Apple Music iHeart Media Pandora

Pandora has made the news again with founder Tim Westergren stepping up to the role of CEO, replacing Brain McAndrews. These are certainly uncertain times for Pandora, once the stand out success story of digital music, at least from commercial terms if not always from a songwriter’s perspective.

Chart Of The Week. Playlists 1, Albums 0 – How Streaming Is Changing Music Listening

Mark Mulligan

21 Mar 2016

albums Chart Of The Week Chart Of The Week

The album has been under assault ever since Napster first gave consumers the ability cherry pick their favourite tracks and leave the filler behind. Apple formalised the process with the iTunes Store and in recent years streaming has hammered the nail in the coffin by supercharging the consumption s...

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Bad Data Is The Worm In The Apple For Streaming Music

Mark Mulligan

14 Mar 2016

7Digital Bad Data data

2016 is proving to be tricky year for streaming rights. No sooner did it start to look like artists and labels were beginning to feel comfortable with streaming then along come a veritable flood of songwriter class action suits in the US, against TIDAL , Rhapsody and Spotify , twice .

Music Piracy Hasn't Gone, It Has Merely Changed Its Spots

Mark Mulligan

14 Mar 2016

Chart Of The Week Chart Of The Week mobile piracy

While the music industry slowly got its head around the brave new world of digital in the 2000’s piracy used to be the dominant focus of record labels and their trade associations. Now, with so much momentum and scale among legitimate services that focus has understandably lessened.

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Here's Why Netflix And YouTube Just Parked Tanks On Each Other's Lawns

Mark Mulligan

7 Mar 2016

Chart Of The Week cord cutting cord nevers

Slowly but surely the traditional media industries are waking up to the importance of YouTubers but those taking note most quickly are the subscription video companies, Netflix in particular. As recently illustrated by its commissioning of ‘Haters Back Off’ from YouTuber Colleen Balling-Evans’...

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Quick Take: MTV Trax EE SIM Bundle

Mark Mulligan

3 Mar 2016

EE mtv trax Music

There are two gaping holes in the digital music landscape: 1) a wide range of products for mass market consumers, 2) telco music bundles for pre-pay mobile customers. MusicQubed has just taken a stab at addressing both with a MTV Trax pre-pay SIM bundle with UK mobile carrier EE.

What Sony Music's Purchase Of Essential Music Says About The Future Of The Music Industry

Mark Mulligan

2 Mar 2016

AWAL Blockchain consolidation

Independent label services company Essential Music & Marketing is no longer independent, having just been acquired by Sony Musi c and merged with Sony’s label services division Red to create a new entity: Red Essential.

Quick Take: BBC Music App

Mark Mulligan

1 Mar 2016

BBC BBC Music BBC Music App

The BBC has launched a music app called, well, BBC Music . Available only in the UK, this native music app is one step on a well considered path for the BBC as it tries to carve out a role for itself in streaming era.

Chart Of The Week: Music Subscribers Vs Video Subscribers

Mark Mulligan

29 Feb 2016

Chart Of The Week Music music subscribers

2015 was a big year for streaming music but it was a bigger deal for streaming video, generating $16 billion in revenue compared to $4.5 billion for streaming music. (Both figures are retail values). The contrast between the two streaming markets is pronounced: Streaming Video: Exclusives are a stan...

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The Steady Demise Of The CD Buyer
How The Music Industry Is Sleepwalking Into A Revenue Collapse

Mark Mulligan

26 Feb 2016

cd revenue cd buyers Music buyers

The CD was the catalyst for the record labels’ apogee but now resembles a product strategy time bomb ticking away. With all the momentum of streaming it is tempting to discount CD buyers as an inconvenient legacy of the physical era, a format anomaly that will soon pass.

How Free Is Defining Digital Content Strategy

Mark Mulligan

24 Feb 2016

Add Revenue buzzfeed free

The internet’s ‘gift’ to media companies was free. And it’s the gift that just keeps giving. Record labels, newspapers, online publishers, TV companies, games publishers continue to grapple with how to convince audiences to pay when their product or direct alternatives are ubiquitously avail...

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Vevo Must Break The Mould When It Goes Premium

Mark Mulligan

18 Feb 2016

Erik Huggers Freemium Music

Vevo has long been in search of an identity. In fact you could make an argument that it has had an identity crisis since its inception as a music industry appendage/Trojan Horse superimposed on YouTube (with the latter having little say in the matter unless it was willing to kiss label relationships...

Quick Take: YouTube Acquires BandPage

Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2016

bandpage gleam futures Innovation

Direct to fan platform BandPage today announced that it is being acquired by YouTube. BandPage already integrates with a number of streaming services to sell merchandise, tickets and more for artists directly to fans on streaming platforms.

MIDiA Chart Of The Week: The Steady Decline Of The CD Buyer

Mark Mulligan

8 Feb 2016

cd buyers cd sales Chart Of The Week

As much as we may be in the era of streaming, nearly half of recorded music revenue globally is still derived from physical sales, with the CD making up the vast majority of that. So, for all the understandable focus on how YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud & co are shaping the future of the music bu...

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P2P In The Age Of SVOD
Rights Fragmentation Gives Piracy A Free Pass

Mark Mulligan

5 Feb 2016

Streaming p2p Video subscriptions

Ever since the advent of Napster, media industries have been locked in a war against free. Learning from the lessons of the music business, TV companies nipped much of the P2P demand for shows by fighting free with free itself, launching services such as Hulu and BBC iPlayer.

YouTube Just Broke The Chart’s Back

Mark Mulligan

3 Feb 2016

Artists charts Music

Or rather the music industry just broke the chart’s back with YouTube, although it doesn’t realise it yet. And here’s why… It is normal when switching between old and new worlds to use equivalents, deutschmarks to euros, inches to centimetres, circulation numbers to unique visitors etc.

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