Zach Fuller | MIDiA Research

Quick Take: If We Are Moving from an Attention Economy to a Sentiment Economy, Is Music Still Undervalued?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

19 Dec 2019

Applying economics to music often invites groans from music fans, but here goes…. The recorded music market is currently worth $18.8 billion dollars a year, and thanks to streaming that number is growing....

How Will Finance’s Interest in Music Impact the Industry Compared to Big Tech?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

16 Dec 2019

big tech

Facebook

facebook music

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...

YouTube Music Curators
Media Assets or Next-Gen Labels?

Report by Zach Fuller

13 Dec 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...

20/20 Vision
MIDiA Research Predictions 2020

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

10 Dec 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...

Post-Peak Attention and the Case for Micropayments

Blog post by Zach Fuller

9 Dec 2019

Blockchain

Innovation

Media

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...

Streaming Is Finally Beginning to Turn the German Market

Blog post by Zach Fuller

4 Dec 2019

german music market

Germany

Streaming

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,...

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

Blog post by Zach Fuller

25 Nov 2019

advertising

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...

Infostructure and the Barriers to Innovation

Blog post by Zach Fuller

15 Nov 2019

infostructure

Innovation

media tech

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...

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

Blog post by Zach Fuller

6 Nov 2019

cardi b

cultural insight

Drake

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...

Recession Impact
How an Economic Downturn Could Reshape Digital Media

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

29 Oct 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...

Vice Media Acquires Refinery29 as Digital Media Reaches Its Consolidation Phase

Blog post by 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...

The Playlist Revolution
Streaming’s Battleground

Report by Zach Fuller

30 Sep 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...

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

Blog post by 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...

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

Blog post by Zach Fuller

15 Sep 2019

23 capital

Amuse

music industry

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....

Quick Take: Spotify Expands Premium Duo into Latin America

Blog post by 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,...

Spotify and the Car: Old World, New Tech

Blog post by Zach Fuller

29 Aug 2019

google

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...

What Happens When Tencent Owns 10% of UMG?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

22 Aug 2019

Innovation

Media

umg

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...

The Global Music Publishing Market
Streaming Shifts the Conversation

Cover image for The Global Music Publishing Market

Report by Zach Fuller

22 Aug 2019

Apple

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...

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

Blog post by Zach Fuller

15 Aug 2019

cbs

Disney

Media

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...

Music Publishing and the Catalogue Question

Blog post by Zach Fuller

29 Jul 2019

music catalogue

music publishing

recorded music

“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...