Reports: Independent artists

Browse all of our reports, featuring our analysts' expert insights and analysis of audience segmentation, emerging trends and technologies, value chains, market shares, predictions and more – backed by our proprietary survey data and bespoke models & forecasts. Become a subscriber to get new ones every month, or just pick one to get started.

Creator hubs
Creator tools’ next growth driver

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Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar
The emerging competitive dynamic between insurgents and incumbents is the catalyst for an unprecedented period of innovation in the music creator tools space. However, because this dynamic is underpinned by substantial institutional investment and strong market growth, the second order effect is the further fragmentation of an already congested and oversupplied marketplace.
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BE THE CHANGE - Women Making Music

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Hanna Kahlert and Srishti Das
The second iteration of this project is available to download here . Be The Change: Women Making Music Key insights Gendered expectations have skewed recognition and reward in the music industry: of 401 women creators around the world, 81% think that it is harder for female artists to get recognition than male artists Linked to this is the fact that there are not as many female role models for independent creators (81% agree, 49% ‘agree strongly’) Almost two-thirds of female creators identified sexual harassment or objectification as a key challenge, making it by far the most widely-cited problem Sexualisation and objectification are a consequence (or symptom) of unbalanced power dynamics, as shown by the next ‘big three challenges’: ageism (identified by 38%), lack of access to male-dominated industry resources (36%) and lower pay (27%) These major challenges are symptomatic of deeper issues of systemic male dominance permeating industry attitudes and behaviours; over 90% of our respondents said that they had experienced unconscious bias – nearly half of them frequently Music composition, production and sound has long been connected primarily with men, so it is no surprise that the majority of female creators (63%) feel excluded from the composition and production, which makes this aspect of music creation highly ‘genderized’ Although the overall representation of women in society has increased over the past few decades, 84% of women still feel that there exists a perception that women are expected to take on the primary role of parenting duties.
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Music marketing
Catalogue and song management

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Keith Jopling
The catalogue race is on Music catalogues are changing hands for serious sums of money. The race to acquire the songwriters’ share is on, and it is speeding up. However, while that race is a sprint, what happens after is a marathon. For the acquirers – Hipgnosis and its cohort of competitors, publishing majors like UMPG or indies like BMG – the return on investment is very much a longer-term game.
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Insurgents and Incumbents
How the 2020s Will Remake the Music Business

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Mark Mulligan
As it enters the third decade of the millennium, the recorded music business is in rude health. Revenues are about to enter the second half of a decade of annual growth, streaming is booming, and investment is pouring in. Simultaneously, the fundamentals of the business are changing, from artist and songwriter careers through music company business models to audience behaviour.
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