Blog: market shares

MIDiA is fielding its annual independent label and distributor survey . This is the chance for the independent sector to have its voice heard. Given all of the changes that are taking place in the streaming economy, there has perhaps never been a more important time for this.

The flood of new music created using artificial intelligence (AI) will further erode major label market share, and some label executives’ recent comments about the value of human-made music seem to put those fears in plain sight.

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.

MIDiA’s annual music subscriber market shares report is now available here (see below for more details of the report). Here are some of the key findings. The global base of music subscribers continues to grow strongly with 523.

It has been a long time since the music industry has been in such good shape. So long, in fact, that there are not too many executives left who worked through the pre-crash days. 2021 was the year in which the major label groups capitalised on the momentum, with Universal and Warner going public, an...

The music industry’s growing obsession with declining ARPU will continue to colour the outlook for the global streaming market in revenue terms, but the positive driver of this equation is the rapid growth of music subscribers.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 29 th April) Spotify announces its Q1 2020 results, at which point we will find out whether it had a COVID-bounce like Netflix did ( adding 15.8 million subscribers in Q1 ) or whether growth slowed.

Spotify’s Daniel Ek is betting big on developing a ‘two sided marketplace’ for music . With the company’s market cap on a downward trend despite strong growth metrics , Ek might find himself having to play up the disruption narrative more boldly and more quickly than he’d planned.