Zach Fuller | MIDiA Research

Quick Take: YouTube’s Music Streaming Service Is A Defensive Hedge

Blog post by Zach Fuller

23 May 2018

YouTube has announced it is launching a paid subscription music service ‒ a move that many perceive as the service putting itself in direct competition with Apple, Spotify and Amazon. However, despite...

Music Catalogue and Streaming

Blog post by Zach Fuller

18 May 2018

ar

music catalogue

rhino entertainment

When it comes to the music industry’s transition towards streaming, how the model has worked in the past requires a reconsideration of perspective. This is because throughout the business’s entire...

India and China Media Trends 2018

Report by Zach Fuller

18 May 2018

Streaming

Spotify

Saavn

China and India are undergoing significant change in their media industries. Both countries are viewed as two of the world’s potentially most lucrative economies for digital content, based upon their...

Spotify, Apple Music and Ad-Supported Streaming

Blog post by Zach Fuller

11 May 2018

ad supported streaming

Alexa

Amazon Music

Cast your mind back to streaming yesteryear, back when the format was yet to establish itself as the industry’s dominant source of revenue. Spotify pushed heavily for a free tier, citing its impressive...

Q1 Snapshot: Advertising and Media in Big Tech

Blog post by Zach Fuller

4 May 2018

advertising

Alphabet

amazon media group

The past three months saw big tech’s advertising and media practices thrust into the spotlight, with the very public Cambridge Analytica controversy swiftly following the EU’s introduction of GDPR....

New Media's YouTube Strategy

Blog post by Zach Fuller

27 Apr 2018

broadly

buzzed

Media

New media’s video strategy came to the fore in the last year. With instant articles on Facebook and Google meaning Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox’s core platforms lost significant amounts of traffic, video...

‘Nice for What?’ and the Slow Death of the Album

Blog post by Zach Fuller

10 Apr 2018

apple music

beggars banquet

death of the album

I write this week’s blog conflicted between the music fan who grew up on the album and the MIDiA analyst looking at the numbers (an eternal struggle). Alongside the feature-length film, the LP was one...

Spotify and the Music Industry: Who Needs Who More?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

6 Apr 2018

Kobalt

Netflix

Sony

Following Spotify’s DPO earlier this week, much of the financial commentary around the listing emphasised the company’s loss-making status. Those familiar with Spotify’s business model know this...

Quick Take: Have We Witnessed Peak Silicon Valley?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

30 Mar 2018

Apple

Facebook

fairchild semiconductors

In light of Facebook’s controversial handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it seems a pertinent time to ask if the world is falling out of love with Silicon Valley, the West Coast powerhouse that...

Voice Control Devices
Early Audience Behaviours and Adoption

Report by Zach Fuller

29 Mar 2018

Consumer Behaviour

Apple

Spotify

Connected voice-control devices epitomised by the Amazon Echo have transformed from being mere curiosities of consumer electronic R&D divisions, into becoming positioned as the next hardware paradigm....

Quick Take: Frustrate and Destroy – YouTube’s Frontloaded Strategy

Blog post by Zach Fuller

23 Mar 2018

apple music

deeper

lyor cohen

Listen to any music streaming debate and it will not be long before you the value gap discussion regarding YouTube is brought up. It is a point MIDiA has discussed at length through distinguishing Spotify...

Voice Control Could Cause a Boom in Ad-Supported Music and Podcasts

Blog post by Zach Fuller

16 Mar 2018

Creativity and commerce have a tempestuous relationship at the best of times, yet both recognise the other’s importance in monetising their work. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in ad-land, which...

Quick Take: NME and the Decline of Print

Blog post by Zach Fuller

9 Mar 2018

digital advertising

Facebook

Media

To paraphrase a proverb on the inevitability of change, ‘It is astonishing how long things can continue and how quickly they can fall’. The NME’s swift announcement of a final issue certainly aligns...

Will AI Replace The Artist Altogether Or Will It Serve As Another Creation Tool?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

28 Feb 2018

artificial intelligence

electricity

ernst gombrich

In covering tech trends, we try to avoid chasing after the latest buzzwords at MIDiA. Artificial Intelligence certainly ticks the boxes of Gartner’s famed hype cycle model , i.e. technologies that attract...

Most Streamed Versus All Time Sellers
The Internationalisation Myth

Cover image for Most Streamed Versus All Time Sellers

Report by Zach Fuller

26 Feb 2018

Apple

Spotify

Deezer

As the music industry becomes a streaming industry in all but name, Spotify’s 100 most streamed tracks provide a window into how the overall industry has changed since the advent of access over...

With Black Panther: The Album Soundtrack At Number One In The US, Are We Witnessing A Soundtrack Renaissance?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

20 Feb 2018

Critical Developments

With the film sitting atop the box US office, Black Panther: The Album, executively produced by Kendrick Lamar, has managed a rare franchise feat by debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with 154,000...

The Digital Advertising Contest Between Google And Facebook Is Intensifying

Blog post by Zach Fuller

14 Feb 2018

digital advertising

Facebook

google

Brace yourselves for a stats-centric blog. Having gone through this week’s annual reports from big tech, there have been some important developments in the digital advertising space. These of course...

Quick Take: Is Pandora Too Big to Fail for the US Streaming Economy?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

5 Feb 2018

music industry

Pandora

Spotify

A quick appraisal of the US music streaming space reveals some surprising distinctions in the market, particularly when compared to global trends. The US Streaming market is disproportionately ad-supported:...

Playlisting and the Demographic Destiny of Streaming

Report by Zach Fuller

29 Jan 2018

Streaming

Spotify

YouTube

With playlists representing streaming’s lingua franca, the dramatic shifts in consumption they are powering are rewriting the rule books on music marketing, music formats and revenue generation, all...

Market Definition Lifecycles and the Future of Netflix

Blog post by Zach Fuller

26 Jan 2018

Amazon

Apple

Facebook

How a business defines itself and the products or services it offers are crucial in how market forces (public or private) develop around it. Narrow definitions of business operations in the short-term...