Blog: Music - Page 3

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.

Jersey club in Berlin | Behind the scenes and sounds of 2025

Cover image for Jersey club in Berlin | Behind the scenes and sounds of 2025

Kriss Thakrar

29 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

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DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

Cover image for DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

Hanna Kahlert

29 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

The AI race is a tense one. Billions of dollars have been poured into the likes of OpenAI. Meanwhile, the US and UK governments, among others, have pledged to invest heavily in AI development, suggesting that they feel it is of critical importance to “win” the new space race.

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Background music is a short-term win for DSPs – but it could be a long-term problem

Cover image for Background music is a short-term win for DSPs – but it could be a long-term problem

Olivia Jones

23 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Note: Following the publication of this piece, Spotify released a statement regarding Pelly's article, which is reproduced in full at the bottom of this page. In this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine , Liz Pelly published “ The Ghosts in the Machine ”.

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Sounds of 2025 | MIDiA and Splice name Pluggnb music’s fastest-growing genre

Cover image for Sounds of 2025 | MIDiA and Splice name Pluggnb music’s fastest-growing genre

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Jan 2025

Audience Insight

Cultural trends

With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future.

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Ban or no ban, what comes next for TikTok creators?

Cover image for Ban or no ban, what comes next for TikTok creators?

Hanna Kahlert

22 Jan 2025

Marketing Strategy

The TikTok ban saga continues. The official date of the ban saw the app go dark in the US and Canada, replaced by a notice that the law had come into effect. However, only a few hours later, the app came back online, with a new notice that thanks to the Trump administration’s willingness to work on a deal, it would remain available to US consumers (for now).

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What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Cover image for What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Mark Mulligan

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Since its inception, Spotify has been, and continues to be, the streaming music market’s lightning rod. This is due to its continued ability to maintain leading market share and the fact it is the only leading global DSP that is independent and therefore has to focus place more focus on commercial sustainability than peers owned by global tech superpowers.

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How a US TikTok ban could accelerate the rise of the Global South

Cover image for How a US TikTok ban could accelerate the rise of the Global South

Tatiana Cirisano

9 Jan 2025

Amid a flurry of year-end lists released last month, TikTok published a ranking of the platform’s most popular songs. While US music executives have been busy considering how a potential TikTok ban could impact their artists in the new year, the number one track on TikTok in 2024 was not by an American act at all.

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Anti-algorithm, anti-perfection - the rise of a music counter-culture

Mark Mulligan

20 Dec 2024

Today’s music landscape is one defined by abundance and immediacy. In today’s chronically-online world, everything is over-ground, immediately. Scenes have to work really hard to be underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or marketing person is going to see the buzz and try to bottle its essence for wider consumption.

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RIIZE: When listening to superfans goes too far

Cover image for RIIZE: When listening to superfans goes too far

Olivia Jones

19 Dec 2024

SM Entertainment

Many record labels have spent 2024 trying to capitalise on the power of superfans , inspired by the global success of Korean entertainment companies. However, the recent scandal involving Seunghan, a member of the K-pop group RIIZE, and their label SM Entertainment, prompts questions about whether catering too strongly to the biggest – and loudest – superfans can be detrimental to both artists and their fanbases .

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Overanalysing our Spotify Wrapped: what MIDiA’s stats say about the industry

Cover image for Overanalysing our Spotify Wrapped: what MIDiA’s stats say about the industry

Tatiana Cirisano

12 Dec 2024

Spotify Wrapped

Audience Insight

Last year, as Spotify’s annual Wrapped series hit the internet, MIDiA did what we do best: analyse, publishing a blog piece on what our own year-end data reflects about the state of music streaming and fandom.

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What happens to music when fan-made content eclipses the original IP?

Cover image for What happens to music when fan-made content eclipses the original IP?

Tatiana Cirisano

5 Dec 2024

Last week, MIDiA’s Ben Woods delivered a message to the entertainment industry: nurture fandom or risk losing control of your IP . For years, the way in which consumers engage with their favourite artists, movies, TV shows, and games has become ever more about participation.

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What HYBE and UMG’s Q3 earnings tell us about superfans

Cover image for What HYBE and UMG’s Q3 earnings tell us about superfans

Olivia Jones

3 Dec 2024

Universal Music Group

“Superfan” has been this year’s buzzword in the music industry. From Universal Music Group (UMG) setting its superfan agenda at the start of the year to Warner Music Group announcing its plans for a superfan platform, much of the Western music industry has shifted its focus to monetising fandom.

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It’s social’s stage now: MIDiA’s 2025 predictions webinar

Cover image for It’s social’s stage now: MIDiA’s 2025 predictions webinar

Mark Mulligan

28 Nov 2024

2025 predictions

One of my favourite parts of the MIDiA year is creating the MIDiA predictions report and webinar. It is always a true team effort, with our team of analysts spending weeks brainstorming ideas, proposing predictions, stress testing those to within an inch of their lives, and then writing the report.

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Content creators are disrupting entertainment’s obsession with rights. What does it mean for music?

Cover image for Content creators are disrupting entertainment’s obsession with rights. What does it mean for music?

Tatiana Cirisano

21 Nov 2024

Last week, Spotify announced a suite of new monetisation features for video creators. Yes, you read that right — Spotify has expanded not just beyond music, but also beyond audio itself. Although the video offerings are initially geared towards video podcasters, the company has rebranded its Spotify for Podcasters hub to Spotify for Creators , opening the door for the possibility of catering to video creators more generally (à la YouTube).

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Hold or twist? The music industry’s innovation dilemma

Cover image for Hold or twist? The music industry’s innovation dilemma

Mark Mulligan

20 Nov 2024

streaming growth

As Clayton Christensen identified in The Innovator’s Dilemma, there are two types of innovation: sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. Sustaining innovation is what companies do to enhance existing business models, while disruptive innovation is typically driven by new entrants – insurgents looking to make markets by turning established ones upside down.

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Q3 streaming trends: Why Spotify’s growth in the Global South matters for the music industry

Cover image for Q3 streaming trends: Why Spotify’s growth in the Global South matters for the music industry

Tatiana Cirisano

14 Nov 2024

For much of 2024, music industry discourse centred around Spotify’s content mix. The growing long-tail of artists and songs on the platform is what fueled Universal Music Group’s two-tiered royalty system, and rights holders continue to raise concerns about sharing space with audiobooks and podcasts.

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Nintendo’s music app underlines its cross-entertainment future

Cover image for Nintendo’s music app underlines its cross-entertainment future

Rhys Elliott

8 Nov 2024

Business Strategy

Nintendo is at the forefront of the cross-entertainment trend. Alongside console games and hardware, Nintendo’s strategy spans theme parks, Hollywood (including the billion-dollar-grossing Super Mario movie), mobile, toys, merch, and even alarm clocks.

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Two future paths for the vinyl revival

Cover image for Two future paths for the vinyl revival

Tatiana Cirisano

31 Oct 2024

monetising fandom

The vinyl resurgence is among the top music industry narratives of the past few years, especially given the recent focus on monetising fandom. The elephant in the room is the question of how long this resurgence will last.

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State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation

Mark Mulligan

31 Oct 2024

label market shares

Independent labels

MIDiA is excited to announce our latest report “ State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation”. It represents the most extensive piece of research we have ever done. Through a combination of our annual Independent Label and Distributor Survey and an exhaustive (and exhausting) programme of desk research, MIDiA collected company level revenue data totalling $10.

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How big can music merch get? MIDiA’s latest report charts the course to $16B by 2030

Cover image for How big can music merch get? MIDiA’s latest report charts the course to $16B by 2030

Tatiana Cirisano

24 Oct 2024

music merchandise

monetising fandom

Over the weekend, Billie Eilish launched a pop-up merchandise shop in SoHo, New York, where fans could choose from items like a $20 pair of shoelaces, $30 belt, $30 necktie, and $60 necklace. Partnered with American Express , the experience, which previously opened in Tokyo, also included a photobooth, hangout area, and larger-than-life statue of Eilish’s “blohsh” mascot.

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