Reports: Music Industry

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.

Music catalogue acquisition
Picking apart the $5 billion competition for icons

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Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

March 2022

investment

Music streaming

music catalogue

A variety of economic factors and stock market volatility during the coronavirus pandemic helped establish music as an attractive asset class for institutional investors. With labels, publishers, institutional investors, and newly launched funds now competing for the same diminishing pool of evergreen catalogue, competition and prices are high.

Recorded music market 2021
Red letter year

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Mark Mulligan

March 2022

Streaming Music

Recorded music

Independent labels

MIDiA suggested in 2020 that 2021 was going to be a strong year for the recorded music market. Indeed, 2021 turned out to be the fastest-growing year in living memory, with growth across most formats – compared to in 2020, when streaming was the only growth segment.

State of the live streaming nation
Reframing the format post-lockdown

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Tatiana Cirisano

January 2022

Consumer behaviour

live music

Gaming

The loss of touring income during the global pandemic spurred fast growth in a previously niche concert live streaming ecosystem. However, as the world begins to re-open and physical touring resumes, the live streaming industry is encountering a new set of challenges – as well as potential opportunities.

Music market subscriber shares 2021
Growth is not letting up yet

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Mark Mulligan

December 2021

Subscriptions

Streaming

Music Subscriptions

This report presents key figures from MIDiA’s global music subscriber market shares model. The full dataset is published alongside this report, with quarterly data (from Q4 2015 to Q1 2021) and annual label trade revenue (from FY 2015 to FY 2020) for more than 20 streaming services across 34 different markets.

Spotify Q3 2021 earnings
Premium matures as advertising accelerates

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Mark Mulligan

November 2021

Spotify

Business Strategy

Spotify is in a transition phase. Monthly active user (MAU) growth bounced back, but user growth is in a mid-term slowdown phase while the business begins its transition to emerging markets and ad-based audio – with the latter showing more signs of movement than the former.

Independent label market shares
Up on all counts

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Mark Mulligan

October 2021

Spotify

Record labels

Independent labels

This report presents record label market share that is measured not just by label reported revenues, but also by separating the revenues of independent labels that are distributed by major label groups, in order to give a more precise view of how the independent sector is performing.

Live streamed events consumer behaviour
Q2 2021

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Mark Mulligan

October 2021

live music

Music

Live video streaming

This report looks at live stream audience data and audience behaviour trends with regards to live streamed events. Methodological notes: The Brazil self-reported, live streamed penetration rate from MIDiA’s survey came in at 22% for Q2 2021 – a sharp increase on previous quarters.

Spotify Q2 2021 earnings
Slowdown arrives

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Mark Mulligan

August 2021

Streaming

Music Subscriptions

Spotify

The growth headwinds that appeared in Q1 2021 manifested in a pronounced user growth slowdown in Q2, with ad-supported users hit hardest. Spotify has been through lean growth periods before, but what is different this time is that streaming’s new players are growing at pace.

Addressable creator markets
An opportunity with many layers

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Mark Mulligan

July 2021

Apple

Apple

Artists

The music creator tools space is undergoing a change that is simultaneously renaissance and transformation. The creator culture boom has driven an unprecedented degree of investment and investor interest. However, because the music creator tools space is a collection of diverse products and services, an underlying challenge has been how to identify exactly what the total addressable market (TAM) is.

MIDiA Research 2021 – 2028 global music forecasts
ARPU growth finally delivers

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Mark Mulligan

June 2021

revenue

Global

Music

This report presents the key figures, trends and drivers of MIDiA’s music forecast model. The figures presented in this report are both retail and label trade values and are in billions of US dollars unless otherwise stated. An Excel file posted alongside this report provides complete country level data, including DSP market shares and a detailed methodology statement.

Spotify Q1 2021 earnings
Shifting headwinds

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Mark Mulligan

May 2021

Spotify

YouTube

Deezer

The first quarter of the year is usually a slow one for Spotify, but Q1 2021 saw a few metrics slowing more than in previous years. There were lots of solid performance metrics in Spotify’s results and a slew of new product announcements, but there were also signs of a coming slowdown driven in large part by wider industry headwinds.

Live streamed concert demand
Ready for prime time

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Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin and Kriss Thakrar

May 2021

Spotify

Spotify

live music

Virtual concerts went from zero to a hundred at an unprecedented rate during the pandemic-shaped 2020, and the momentum carried through to 2021. But if lockdown years are like dog years, then so too the evolution of the current virtual event marketplace has been concertinaed.

Rebalancing the Song Economy

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Mark Mulligan and Keith Jopling

April 2021

Music

Introduction – Rebalancing the song economy After half a decade of streaming-driven growth the global music business hit a speed bump in the shape of the COVID-19 pandemic. Live music stopped in an instant, radio boomed then dipped and physical sales plummeted as stores closed.

Recorded music market 2020
Pandemic-era growth

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Mark Mulligan

March 2021

Streaming

Streaming Music

Recorded music

The global pandemic turned the music industry upside down. While live was decimated throughout 2020, after an initial downturn, the recorded music market returned to growth and finished the year with an acceleration that suggests a strong 2021 lies ahead.

Spotify Q4 2020 earnings
ARPU pays the price for growth

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Mark Mulligan

February 2021

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

In 2020 Spotify accelerated the growth of its total user base, with emerging markets playing a key role. However, revenue increases became decoupled from user growth across all categories, resulting in ARPU deflation. Companies and brands mentioned in...

Music marketing
Catalogue and song management

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Keith Jopling

February 2021

Artists

Independent artists

music marketing

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.

Music Product Strategy Re-boot
Time to Monetise Fandom, Not Access

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Mark Mulligan

January 2021

Innovation

Spotify

Spotify

As streaming reaches maturity in many of the largest music markets and middle-tier artists struggle to make ends meet with the live music hiatus, the time has come for a music product strategy re-boot – for a bold, new wave of music products that look to build beyond streaming, delivering increased income for both rights holders and creators.

Virtual Concerts
A New Video Format

Cover image for Virtual Concerts

Mark Mulligan

December 2020

YouTube

Amazon

Facebook

The global pandemic thrust the live music sector into chaos, with global revenues falling by 75% in 2020 compared to one year previously. The music industry was rocked by first-order impacts (no concerts, no fan engagement) and second-order impacts (many artists realising that streaming did not add up without live income alongside it).

Spotify Q3 2020 Earnings
The Shift to Free

Cover image for Spotify Q3 2020 Earnings

Mark Mulligan

November 2020

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

With three quarters of 2020 gone, Spotify has prospered during the most challenging of times, with consistent growth across most metrics. Q3 2020 saw a slight deviation from the script though, with ad-supported in the driving seat, especially in emerging markets.

State of the YouTube Music Economy 3.0
End of the Beginning

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Mark Mulligan

October 2020

Spotify

YouTube

YouTube

This is the third bi-annual report of its kind, providing the most comprehensive view available of the YouTube music economy. It presents data for revenues, royalty payments, streams, subscribers, user behaviour and user demographics. We explore success factors, cultural trends, monetisation frameworks and contextualise music’s performance against other content genres.

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