Blog: Apple Music

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Music subscriber market shares 2024: Slowdown? What slowdown?

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares 2024: Slowdown? What slowdown?

Mark Mulligan

27 Mar 2025

Business Strategy

Record label streaming revenue growth slowed to 6% in 2024 but there was no such slowdown in subscriber growth. In our just published ‘ Music subscriber market shares Q4 2024 ’ report, we reveal that the 85 million net* new subscribers added in 2024 was only two million less than in 2023, resulting in 818 million subscribers and growth of 12% i.

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A model for a new music streaming industry

Cover image for A model for a new music streaming industry

Mark Mulligan

18 Mar 2025

Business Strategy

The music industry is approaching a pivot point. On the one hand, things look positive: we have UMG’s Streaming 2.0 , artist centric licensing, the impending launch of supremium and expanded rights revenue hitting $4.

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TikTok may be shutting down its music service, but it will still compete with streaming

Cover image for TikTok may be shutting down its music service, but it will still compete with streaming

Hanna Kahlert

24 Sep 2024

TikTok has announced that it plans to shut down its music streaming service, TikTok Music, at the end of November (per Bloomberg ). The company has cautioned users that they should migrate all their playlists to other streaming platforms.

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Music subscriber market shares 2023: New momentum

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares 2023: New momentum

Mark Mulligan

8 Feb 2024

music subscriber market shares

Streaming market share

With UMG leading the charge to reshape the music industry into a more label-friendly form, 2023 may, with hindsight, go down as the year before everything changed . Whatever lies ahead though, new models will take time to deliver benefits.

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Party in the front, business in the back: Why Apple Music Sing is so savvy

Cover image for Party in the front, business in the back: Why Apple Music Sing is so savvy

Tatiana Cirisano

13 Dec 2022

Music streaming

Streaming services are increasingly taking steps to diversify their offerings , and the latest example came last week from Apple Music. Just in time for holiday sing-a-longs, the service introduced a new, subscriber-only karaoke feature called Sing, where users can sing along to “tens of millions” of songs with beat-by-beat lyrics.

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The cost of music streaming just went up — here is what must come next

Cover image for The cost of music streaming just went up — here is what must come next

Tatiana Cirisano

3 Nov 2022

Music streaming

It is finally happening. Apple Music raised its music streaming subscription price for the first time ever, following price rises from the likes of YouTube and Deezer, and Spotify indicates that it will do the same in 2023.

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Midnights: modern-day music marketing 101

Cover image for Midnights: modern-day music marketing 101

Ashleigh Millar

27 Oct 2022

online communities

Are we surprised that Taylor Swift has broken records (yet again) after dropping her new album, Midnights (and Midnights (3am Edition) )? In the first five days of release, Midnights earned more than an equivalent of 1.

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As Apple hits 100 million songs, the future of music discovery gets complicated

Cover image for As Apple hits 100 million songs, the future of music discovery gets complicated

Tatiana Cirisano

6 Oct 2022

Music streaming

Music discovery

Apple Music celebrated the milestone of hitting 100 million songs this week — “more music than you can listen to in a lifetime, or several lifetimes”, global head of editorial, Rachel Newman, wrote in the announcement .

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Apple connects the dots

Cover image for Apple connects the dots

Tatiana Cirisano

31 Aug 2022

Music streaming

We are entering the era of the end-to-end music company. Companies are increasingly striving to capture more parts of the value chain by building end-to-end ecosystems that serve creators at all levels along every step, from music creation to distribution to marketing and beyond.

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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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The past, present and future of the creator economy runs through Apple

Cover image for The past, present and future of the creator economy runs through Apple

Kriss Thakrar

11 Feb 2022

Creator economy

In previous posts, we have talked about the possibilities opening up for the next generation of creators . In particular, posts on fluid audio and social studios showed how music has the potential to become more collaborative, interactive and adaptive to the consumer, turning creation into a consumer entertainment proposition.

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Music Subscriber Market Shares Q1 2020

Cover image for Music Subscriber Market Shares Q1 2020

Mark Mulligan

23 Jun 2020

music subscribers

music subscriber market shares

WWDC would have been a perfect opportunity for Apple to announce another streaming milestone for Apple Music. It didn’t but the good news is that MIDiA already have a figure for Apple Music, as part of our latest music subscriber market shares.

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Subscriptions put premium consumers as well as premium content behind paywalls

Cover image for Subscriptions put premium consumers as well as premium content behind paywalls

Georgia Meyer

5 Jul 2018

There are now 436 million paying subscribers across five of the largest distributors of digital music and video content globally (Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Tencent). This has very different implications depending on which part of the ecosystem your business sits in.

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Do Playlists Make the Power Law in Music Even More Extreme?

Zach Fuller

31 May 2018

Music streaming

Music has always been a superstar economy. Data going back to the 50s shows that, like many other areas of life and business, a disproportionate amount of the results come from a small number of factors.

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Spotify, Apple Music and Ad-Supported Streaming

Zach Fuller

11 May 2018

ad supported streaming

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 conversion rates to paid subscriptions.

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Free Report: Digital Music Is Streaming Forward

Dara Jegede

16 Apr 2018

Amazon Prime Music

MIDiA is proud to partner with DiMA on its inaugural Streaming Forward Report. Digital distribution, andstreaming in particular, has been transforming music business in recent years. Although digital business models had already transformed content marketplaces prior to the rise of streaming, it is the rise of streaming services that really flicked the switch on this radical transformation.

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

Zach Fuller

10 Apr 2018

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 of the definitive artistic mediums to emerge in the 20th century, but it was also bound to the same business framework of many enterprises of the period; factory-powered mass production methods with the product demand side stoked by television and radio.

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

Zach Fuller

23 Mar 2018

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 and YouTube’s business models (that of all streams created equal vs share of ad revenue), but YouTube Head of Music Lyor Cohen is looking to change that.

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Disney, Netflix and the Squeezed Middle: The Real Story Behind Net Neutrality

Cover image for Disney, Netflix and the Squeezed Middle: The Real Story Behind Net Neutrality

Mark Mulligan

15 Dec 2017

Unless you have been hiding under a rock this last couple of weeks you’ll have heard at least something about the build up to the decision over turning net neutrality in the US, a decision that was confirmed yesterday.

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Shazam Is Apple’s Echo Nest

Mark Mulligan

11 Dec 2017

Shazam finally found a buyer: Apple. Ever since its affiliate sales revenue model crumbled with the onset of streaming (there’s no business in an affiliate fee on a $0.01 stream), Shazam has been trying to find a new business model.

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