Reports: Business Strategy

Streaming Music Pricing
Inelastic Stretching

Mark Mulligan

February 2017

Streaming

Streaming Music

streaming subscriptions

Pricing has long been an issue for streaming music subscriptions, with the $9.99 price point having the double challenge of reducing the spending of the most valuable music buyers and being higher than the average spend of most music buyers. Streaming services have worked around the issue with a combination of telco music bundles and aggressive price discounts.

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Next Steps For Telco Music
The Revenue Or User Dilemma

Mark Mulligan

December 2016

Streaming Music

Music Subscriptions

music bundles

Streaming’s early fortunes were intimately tied to telco music strategy, with the streaming services eager to piggy back telcos’ much larger marketing budgets and telcos equally keen to pursue marketplace differentiation and brand kudos. Telco music bundles are delivering more revenue and users than ever before but their relative role in the streaming economy has lessened.

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Facebook The Media Company
If It Looks Like A Duck

Mark Mulligan

December 2016

Paid Content

Facebook

Content strategy

Facebook beat financial analyst estimates with its Q3 2016 earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017, due to the digital ad market feeling the pinch of advertiser budgets, which are lagging behind the shift in user behaviour. Facebook’s stock fell by 7% but Plan B is already in motion: to become a media company.

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Next Generation Apps
The Rise Of Mobile Life Ecosystems

Karol Severin

November 2016

app economy

next generation apps

mobile life ecosystems

The world of mobile is undergoing a seismic shift. It used to be that the smartphone platform world was largely understood in terms of a couple of big operating systems (iOS and Android) and their respective app stores. But now a succession of apps have emerged as platforms that exist both within and across OS boundaries.

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From Music Video To Music Inspired Video
Music Video In The Multi-Distribution Era

Tim Mulligan

November 2016

music video

SVOD

TVOD

Music video at the end of 2016 finds itself at a crossroads. The original perception of Music video as a sales promotion tool no longer applies in the post-download era, when consumers are now showing a clear preference for streaming rather than buying one-off products.

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The Death of the Monthly Active User
Redefining User Metrics For The App Era

Zach Fuller

November 2016

Subscriptions

Paid Content

Freemium

The Monthly Active User (MAU) metric is the default measure of digital services but its usefulness is lessening. While it offered desktop-era services a better alternative to page views, its use for mobile apps is increasingly anachronistic. With the advent of smartphones, users are absorbing app-based services far more intimately into their lives, consequently leading to frequency of activity going far beyond monthly usage.

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Next Generation TV Operators
Reconsolidation Is A-Coming

Tim Mulligan

October 2016

mobile apps

SVOD

OTT

Nearly a decade has passed since Netflix launched its subscription video service in 2007, and the intervening nine years have seen an explosion in competing offerings. The result is adisjointed premium video experience for the digital consumer, with content fragmented across multiple siloed competing services.

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Streaming Music Health Check
Streaming’s Watershed Moment

Mark Mulligan

October 2016

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q2 2016 emerged as a watershed moment for streaming music, with label streaming revenue growing strongly enough to lift overall revenues for all three major labels. Meanwhile Spotify and Apple registered record growth, soon followed by streaming announcements from Amazon, Pandora and iHeart Media.

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Candy Crush, Clash Of Clans And The Future Of Mobile Games
From Silos To Ecosystems

Karol Severin

August 2016

mobile games

clash of clans

freemium games

Though mobile games differ largely by genre, demographics and business models, most share the status of social connector and cultural identifier. Much like music companies, mobile gaming companies often struggle with conversion to payment as well as a regular production of hits to retain momentum in the long term.

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Music Market Region Profile: Latin America
Streaming Drives A Music Market Renaissance

Leo Morel

March 2016

Streaming

Streaming Music

mexico

Driven by the proliferation of smartphones, streaming is beginning to gain traction across Latin America, resulting in new forms of music consumption. Whereas interest in physical formats has been steadily falling, most Latin American countries have not developed music download markets, thus creating latent digital demand.

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US PAY-TV Disruption And Consolidation
How Streaming Video And Cord Cutting Are Re-Shaping US Pay-TV

Tim Mulligan

February 2016

US

cable tv

usa

2015 was a year of unparalleled transition for US pay-TV. AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV catapulted the communications company to the front of the pack with a combined subscriber base of 26 million, reaching nearly a quarter of US households. Meanwhile regulators blocked Comcast’s year long bid for Time Warner, enabling rival Charter Communications to move in on the newly vulnerable target.

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Mobile Market Country Profile: France
A Maturing App Market On The Brink Of MNO Consolidation

Karol Severin

February 2016

France

mobile apps

mobile

France is one of the leading European app markets. Like other key markets in the region, the French app market is already maturing with annual revenue and app buyer growth set to slow to single digits by 2020. With this shift in market dynamics, average revenue per user (ARPU) will gain importance.

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P2P In The Age Of SVOD
Rights Fragmentation Gives Piracy A Free Pass

Mark Mulligan

February 2016

Streaming

p2p

Video subscriptions

Ever since the advent of Napster, media industries have been locked in a war against free. Learning from the lessons of the music business, TV companies nipped much of the P2P demand for shows by fighting free with free itself, launching services such as Hulu and BBC iPlayer.

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The Third Screen Revolution
The Explosion In Mobile Video

Karol Severin and Tim Mulligan

January 2016

Content strategy

mobile video

content format innovation

Mobile might be eating the world, but is it eating video? The rapid uptake of mobile video consumption in recent years has captured the attention of many as it raises questions about where the future of video consumption is headed. Though it might cannibalise some TV and online viewing time, mobile video is here to co-exist alongside its large-screen cousins rather than to replace them.

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State Of The Streaming Nation
A Comprehensive Assessment Of The Global Streaming Music Market

Mark Mulligan

January 2016

Subscriptions

Streaming Music

Music Subscriptions

2015 was the year streaming music came of age, with robust growth from market leader Spotify and the rapid ascent into second place of new entrant Apple Music. Though questions remain about the commercial viability of the model right across the value chain, there is no doubt that momentum is now with streaming.

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Telco Music Strategy
Ironing Out The Strategic Kinks As Objectives Evolve

Mark Mulligan

November 2015

Subscriptions

Streaming

music bundles

In a few short years, telco music bundles have gone from a useful ancillary revenue stream to a core component of the streaming landscape. Despite long standing issues about how success can best be measured, telcos continue to invest heavily in music deals that are unlikely to ever deliver direct profit but that instead help drive metrics across the rest of their businesses.

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Mobile Messaging Platforms
How Facebook’s Hedge Strategy Is Changing The Face Of Messaging

Karol Severin and Mark Mulligan

October 2015

apps

mobile apps

mobile

In just a few short years mobile messaging apps have become home to the largest group of digital audiences on the planet, with 4.8 billion cumulative monthly active users. Following websites and social networks, messaging platforms are emerging as the third phase of how audiences congregate digitally.

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User Generated Broadcast
Live Streaming Video And The Mainstream Consumer

Tim Mulligan

October 2015

Online video

Live video streaming

User Generated Broadcast

The early adopter buzz around the launches of the live video streaming apps Meerkat and Twitter-acquired Persicope have so far failed to translate into meaningful real world adoption. But these User Generated Broadcast (UGB) apps have undoubted potential.

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Global Music Forecasts 2015-2020
Declining Legacy Formats Cancel Out Streaming Growth

Mark Mulligan

October 2015

Subscriptions

music sales

Music revenue

In a few short years streaming has gone from being an interesting sideshow to the most important component of the recorded music market in terms of impact, innovation and disruption, though not in revenue terms. Indeed streaming still only represents 16% of all recorded music revenue but its growth is directly impacting virtually every other aspect of the industry.

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Variable Programming
How Online Video Is Shaking Off The Schedule Straightjacket

Tim Mulligan

September 2015

Netflix

tv networks

cord nevers

The advent of Video On Demand transformed the business models of the broadcast and pay-TV industries. Now it is set to have an equally disruptive impact on the nature of video content itself as the old analogue limits of linear TV programming no longer apply.

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