Zach Fuller

If we are moving from an attention economy to a sentiment economy, is music still undervalued?

Cover image for If we are moving from an attention economy to a sentiment economy, is music still undervalued?

Zach Fuller

19 Dec 2019

Music streaming

post-peak attention

The recorded music market is currently worth $18.8 billion dollars a year, and thanks to streaming that number is growing. However, this number represents only the captured value of recorded music. Music sells tickets, clothes (although Urban Outfitters as a vinyl retailer might argue it is the othe...

min read

How will finance’s interest in music impact the industry compared to big tech?

Cover image for How will finance’s interest in music impact the industry compared to big tech?

Zach Fuller

16 Dec 2019

With Hipgnosis continuing to acquire copyright, coupled with Warner Music Group and Providence Equity’s announcement of Tempo Music Investments, the finance industry’s interest in the recorded music business continues to gather momentum.

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YouTube Music Curators
Media Assets or Next-Gen Labels?

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Zach Fuller

December 2019

Spotify

Music publishing

YouTube

The rise of the YouTube channel curator was one of the defining stories in music throughout the 2010s, and yet in the era of global success stories such as Kondzilla and T-Series, their place in the music ecosystem is still being defined. YouTube points both towards the potential future of the label and essentially a new kind of visual media proper...

20/20 Vision
MIDiA Research Predictions 2020

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Alistair Taylor, Amanda Stears, Karol Severin, Keith Jopling, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

December 2019

Apple

Spotify

Discovery

In this report MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech across music, video, media, brands, marketing, games and sports in 2020 and the coming decade. Companies and brands mentioned in...

Post-peak attention and the case for micropayments

Zach Fuller

9 Dec 2019

Success in new business paradigms involves wasting what is abundant to capture what is scarce. The Industrial Revolution did this by taking advantage of technologies that used the finite resource of human physical labour (steam, electricity) and made it considerably more efficient, allowing for bigg...

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Streaming is finally beginning to turn the German market

Cover image for Streaming is finally beginning to turn the German market

Zach Fuller

4 Dec 2019

german music market

Still the fourth-largest market by revenue after the US, UK, and Japan, Germany has been comparatively slow to make the digital transition while remaining a key territory for record labels due to its scale, spending power and robust physical market.

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The Imitation Game: Why First-Mover Advantage Could Lose its Allure in Tech Strategy

Zach Fuller

25 Nov 2019

Media and Marketing

‘Originality is nothing but judicious imitation’ - Voltaire ‘Good artists copy;great artists steal’ – Steve Jobs Being the first is overrated when it means you can instantly be copied. The ‘time profit’ strategy is one of the most widely utilised models in tech-centric business.

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Infostructure and the Barriers to Innovation

Zach Fuller

15 Nov 2019

Or, Why the United States Never Built High-Speed Connecting Railways Disruption is never simple, and what is often logically more efficient rarely wins out in the game of adoption. This process has a storied history in consumer tech: Betamax and VHS, DVD and Blue-Ray – but its roots go back even f...

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Seven Developments in Recorded Music in the 2010s (and the Songs that Defined them)

Zach Fuller

6 Nov 2019

cultural insight

Decade retrospectives are almost doomed to fail. Assess the 60s in 1969 and you would have likely overweighed the influence of Grand Funk Railroad compared to The Velvet Underground. When it comes to the 70s, proto Hip-Hop pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash or the Post-Punk of Joy Division would hav...

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Recession Impact
How an Economic Downturn Could Reshape Digital Media

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Alistair Taylor, Amanda Stears, Karol Severin, Keith Jopling, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

October 2019

Apple

Spotify

Amazon

Ten years on from the credit crunch, the global economy could be poised to enter another economic recession. Many of the underlying causes of the credit crunch remain in place, due to governments lacking the appetite for the structural reform required to right the faults in the global financial system that catalysed the slowdown.

Vice Media Acquires Refinery29 as Digital Media Reaches Its Consolidation Phase

Zach Fuller

4 Oct 2019

It does not feel like long ago that Vice was the darling of digital media, attracting investment from Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox and TPG with valuations reaching as high as $5.7 billion. As the financial lust wore-off, investments were written down, staff cut and long-standing management removed.

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The Playlist Revolution
Streaming’s Battleground

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Zach Fuller

September 2019

Streaming Music

Apple

Spotify

Playlists are swiftly becoming the lingua franca of the music streaming economy. While most closely associated with Spotify, playlists are now central to streaming as an entire sector. While playlists may not yet have become the dominant use case for streaming music in the way that binge watching is for video, they are transforming how audiences co...

Amazon Launches HD Streaming: Is Quality Still Enough to Escape Commodification?

Zach Fuller

23 Sep 2019

This week, Amazon will launch Amazon Music HD in the US, UK, Germany and Japan, offering 50 million lossless HD songs with a sample rate of 44.1kHz described by Amazon as ‘CD quality’. It is an interesting move for the company and arguably the first to meaningfully push HD music streaming back i...

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What the Recorded Music Industry Can Learn from the Whaling Industry of the 19th Century

Zach Fuller

15 Sep 2019

A high-risk industry with large upfront costs and no guarantee of return. No, this is not the recorded music industry, nor is it venture capital (VC) – this is the whaling industry of the 19th century.

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Quick Take: Spotify Expands Premium Duo into Latin America

Zach Fuller

5 Sep 2019

latin America music market

latin America streaming

Music streaming

Spotify has announced that its Premium Duo plan will be expanding to another 17 countries, 14 of which are in Latin America. The plan, which is effectively a mini version of its popular family offering, has been created with the express intention of servicing couples who reside at the same home addr...

min read

Spotify and the Car: Old World, New Tech

Zach Fuller

29 Aug 2019

music streaming strategy

radio takes on streaming

Spotify's latest ad is a not-so-subtle push in its most important strategic territory: the car. The campaign, titled 'Spotify for the Ride' , emphasises the ‘soundtrack to your life’ element of the company as well as the proclivity of users to listen all the way through songs while driving compa...

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What Happens When Tencent Owns 10% of UMG?

Zach Fuller

22 Aug 2019

To sound like a broken record, things are about to get difficult for Spotify. To the company’s credit, since its launch a decade ago rumours of its demise have always been greatly exaggerated, with the company regularly proving sceptics wrong through its ability to consistently retain the largest ...

min read

The Global Music Publishing Market
Streaming Shifts the Conversation

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Zach Fuller

August 2019

Apple

Spotify

Spotify

The effects of music streaming having supplanted both the download and the CD as the mainstream format for recorded music (accounting for 50% of total recorded revenue in 2018) are being keenly felt across the music publishing industry. The DNA of streaming consumption (playlists, lower mechanical royalties, less revenue on average for superstar ca...

CBS, Viacom and Media Mergers: Is It Different This Time?

Zach Fuller

15 Aug 2019

Media mergers have a storied history, and one that is often not too positive. Whether it is Time Warner or AOL, talk of synergies often fades when confronted with consumer appetite – but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, perhaps it is worth considering how this time it may be different.

min read

Music Publishing and the Catalogue Question

Zach Fuller

29 Jul 2019

music catalogue

Music publishing

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Somewhere in a field back in the summer of 2008, Rage Against the Machine used this line as the bridge in their opening song ‘Testify’ during their Friday headline act.

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