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 Spotify’s TAM is only part of the story

Cover image for Why Spotify’s TAM is only part of the story

Mark Mulligan

9 Jun 2022

addressable audience

Spotify just held an investor day in which it ran through its vision for growth. Spotify has long touted the concept of its total addressable market (TAM), its path to a billion users and the role of emerging markets as the surest path to this figure.

min read

The Attention Recession
How inflation and the pandemic are reshaping entertainment

Cover image for The Attention Recession

Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan, Karol Severin, Hanna Kahlert, Tatiana Cirisano and Annie Langston

May 2022

Video

Music

Games

With the recent announcement of the 0.2 million subscriber drop in Netflix’s Q1 2022 figures, and Spotify seeing slower paid user growth, MIDiA’s predicted attention recession has come into fruition. MIDiA’s in-house analysts take you through the key insights and trends of this new chapter and its implications across music, video, games, marketing, and audio industries.

The Attention Recession: How inflation and the pandemic are reshaping entertainment

Cover image for The Attention Recession: How inflation and the pandemic are reshaping entertainment

Mark Mulligan

25 May 2022

attention recession

Attention economy

Media and Marketing

Netflix and Meta were the canaries in the proverbial mine for the attention recession and it is looking increasingly likely that difficult times lie ahead. If the attention crunch was not enough on its own, it has been compounded by the perfect storm of headwinds: the cost of living crisis, rising interest rates, energy and global grain supply constraints, and the Russo-Ukrainian war.

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How the iPod changed everything

Cover image for How the iPod changed everything

Mark Mulligan

10 May 2022

Apple just announced that it is finally ending production of the iPod . At 21 years of age, it outlived many of the dramatic changes it witnessed and triggered. In this age, dominated by streaming (and a vinyl resurgence), the iPod did not really have a place anymore, other than with its ever-diminishing base of super fans.

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Music industry earnings 2021: Riding the wave

Cover image for Music industry earnings 2021: Riding the wave

Mark Mulligan

6 May 2022

Streaming Music

Universal music’s Q1 2022 earnings showed continued growth but a noticeable slowdown in streaming growth, with streaming revenues up 12% year-on-year (YoY) in USD term compared to a growth of 35% one year earlier.

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The attention recession has hit Spotify too

Cover image for The attention recession has hit Spotify too

Mark Mulligan

27 Apr 2022

Media and Marketing

Spotify added two million subscribers in Q1 2022. Yes, this incorporates the impact of 1.5 million lost Russian subscribers and is set against Netflix having lost 0.2 million subscribers over the same quarter.

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Music industry earnings 2021
Riding the wave

Cover image for Music industry earnings 2021

Mark Mulligan

April 2022

Streaming Music

Spotify

Pandora

In this report MIDiA presents, contrasts and analyses headline financial metrics of 12 leading music industry companies across labels, publishers, streaming and live. The companies tracked represent more than half of total global music industry revenues across these sectors.

Forget peak Netflix, this is the attention recession

Cover image for Forget peak Netflix, this is the attention recession

Mark Mulligan

20 Apr 2022

peak attention economy

Attention economy

Forget peak Netflix, this is the attention recession Netflix’s Q1 2022 results caused a stir, with subscriber numbers down by 0.2 million from one quarter earlier. Some are calling this ‘peak Netflix’, but this is not a Netflix-specific issue.

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Fake artists are what happens when fandom dies

Cover image for Fake artists are what happens when fandom dies

Mark Mulligan

7 Apr 2022

Cultural trends

The topic of ‘fake artists’ refuses to go away . For those who have been on Mars for the last couple of years, fake artists refer to artists who release under a streaming pen name but do not build any artist profile around the music.

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Did independents really do three times worse than the majors in 2021?

Cover image for Did independents really do three times worse than the majors in 2021?

Mark Mulligan

22 Mar 2022

Business Strategy

Today, the IFPI released its estimates for the global recorded music market, with reported revenues of $25.9 billion. Last year, the IFPI estimated global revenues to be $21.6 billion (note that the IFPI retrospectively changes its historical figures every year, but you can see its actual 2020 figure here ), which implies a growth rate of 20% (18.

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Recorded music market shares 2021 – Red letter year

Cover image for Recorded music market shares 2021 – Red letter year

Mark Mulligan

18 Mar 2022

Record music market

global music revenues

label trade revenues 2021

We suggested back in 2020, that 2021 was going to be a strong year for the recorded music market. As it turns out, 2021 was the fastest growing year in living memory, with growth across most formats, contrasting strongly with 2020 when streaming was the only growth segment.

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Recorded music market 2021
Red letter year

Cover image for Recorded music market 2021

Mark Mulligan

March 2022

Streaming Music

Recorded music

Independent labels

MIDiA suggested in 2020 that 2021 was going to be a strong year for the recorded music market. Indeed, 2021 turned out to be the fastest-growing year in living memory, with growth across most formats – compared to in 2020, when streaming was the only growth segment.

Why Dolly Parton may want to wait before selling her catalogue

Cover image for Why Dolly Parton may want to wait before selling her catalogue

Mark Mulligan

10 Mar 2022

Cultural trends

In a recent interview with the BBC, Dolly Parton said that she is considering selling her publishing catalogue, stating that she would simply launch a new publishing company and start all over again. On the one hand, this is not the first time she has publicly pondered the move (the first time was in December 2020 ), and is thus probably aimed at pushing up buyer demand and creating a bidding war.

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Epic Games, Bandcamp, and fandom for the ‘me’ generation

Cover image for Epic Games, Bandcamp, and fandom for the ‘me’ generation

Mark Mulligan

3 Mar 2022

Cultural trends

Honestly, it has been a struggle to find the inspiration to write a blog post about the music industry, considering what is going on in the world at the moment. But along came this story, which is eye opening enough to put virtual pen to paper: Epic Games buys Bandcamp.

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Audio audiences
Steady change

Cover image for Audio audiences

Mark Mulligan, Tatiana Cirisano and Annie Langston

February 2022

Radio

radio audiences

music radio

Podcasts reinvigorated the audio market, bringing with it the promise of a ‘Netflix moment’ for radio. Though podcast audience growth has not kept pace with industry interest and hype, podcasts have been at the centre of a boom in audio consumption that was accentuated by Covid lockdowns, and that is recalibrating post-pandemic.

Music creators – we want your insight!

Cover image for Music creators – we want your insight!

Mark Mulligan

22 Feb 2022

Audience Insight

Beyond our role in analysing, reporting, predicting, and consulting within music and media, MIDiA is a team of people - many of us creators too - who are committed to making a fairer, more sustainable and creator-friendly music industry.

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Music creators
Slicing the funnel

Cover image for Music creators

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

February 2022

YouTube

SoundCloud

TuneCore

Streaming enabled the rise of the independent artist and then the rise of the music creator. The promise of the long tail finally appeared to be realised. But the pandemic’s disruption of live music catalysed an already growing realisation among long- and mid-tail artists that they lack the scale to benefit from streaming economics.

Why Spotify cannot afford to make it three out of three with podcasts

Cover image for Why Spotify cannot afford to make it three out of three with podcasts

Mark Mulligan

10 Feb 2022

It has been a couple of weeks that Spotify would be glad to forget – if it could. Although many of the arguments have been emotionally charged and the debate says as much about people’s political beliefs as it does business strategy, it is indisputable that there is a lot at stake for Spotify.

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From binging to burnout: the creator economy’s fault line

Cover image for From binging to burnout: the creator economy’s fault line

Mark Mulligan

8 Feb 2022

Cultural trends

The streaming revolution has been built upon audience choice and control, replacing linear with on-demand and in turn opening whole new consumption paradigms. No user behaviour better encapsulates this shift than binge watching, which is done by 60% of video subscribers.

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Spotify chose audio over music, but bigger decisions lie ahead

Cover image for Spotify chose audio over music, but bigger decisions lie ahead

Mark Mulligan

27 Jan 2022

The symbolism behind Spotify’s support of Neil Young removing his music from the platform, rather than Joe Rogan’s podcast being removed for peddling vaccine misinformation was inescapable. For many, this was a highly public test of whether Spotify put audio or music first, and audio won.

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