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.

Cover image for State Of The Streaming Nation 2

State Of The Streaming Nation 2
The Definitive Assessment Of The Global Streaming Music Market

Mark Mulligan

31 May 2017

Subscriptions Streaming Streaming Music

2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metrics while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music mark...

Cover image for Major Label Results Q1 2017

Major Label Results Q1 2017
Full Stream Ahead

Mark Mulligan

17 May 2017

Streaming Apple Spotify

2016 was the turnaround year for the global recorded music business. The prevailing sentiment among battle-scarred label executives was one of cautious optimism. The first quarter results for 2017 suggest they might be able to afford themselves a little less confidence and a little more optimism.

Cover image for Streaming Music Growth

Streaming Music Growth
How The S-Curve Will Determine Growth

Mark Mulligan

24 Apr 2017

Consumer behaviour Streaming Streaming Music

Streaming music drove trade revenues of $5.4 billion in 2016, up 57% from $3.5 billion in 2015 while music subscribers grew from 68.5 million to 106.3 million over the same period. The rate at which the streaming music market will grow, and the level at which it will peak, is determined not just by industry strategy but also by the underlying laws ...

Cover image for Q4: 2016 Streaming Music Market Update

Q4: 2016 Streaming Music Market Update
Competition Is Hotting Up

Mark Mulligan

4 Apr 2017

Streaming Spotify YouTube

2015 was the year in which streaming music came of age but 2016 was the year when it hit the long anticipated milestone of 100 million subscribers, transforming the global recorded music business. 2016 was defined by accelerated subscriber growth, steady global expansion, new competition and strengthening streaming brand identities.

Cover image for Recorded Music Market Shares

Recorded Music Market Shares
Streaming Drives Growth

Mark Mulligan

26 Feb 2017

Spotify Recorded music Deezer

MIDiA has been tracking record label and publisher financial releases throughout 2016. In addition MIDIA has conducted market sizing work on the publishing sector and research for the Worldwide Independent Network’s (WIN) indie label market share project.

Cover image for Live Entertainment

Live Entertainment
Measuring Music's Place

Mark Mulligan

24 Feb 2017

Streaming Music Spotify live music

The live music industry has always had a slightly incongruous relationship with its recorded music industry cousin. Often having to tolerate the record labels’ business being called ‘the music industry’ and equally often, finding itself at the focus of consumer discontent over ticketing practices.

Cover image for Mobile App Cross Usage

Mobile App Cross Usage
Music

Karol Severin

1 Feb 2017

Streaming Music streaming subscriptions value proposition

Mobile app usage is defined by consumers engaging with a multitude of propositions, even when they serve a very similar purpose. Consumers often use multiple different messaging apps, video apps and music apps. Mobile was the catalyst for streaming music’s growth and now accounts for 80% of all streaming activity.

Cover image for Streaming Music Pricing

Streaming Music Pricing
Inelastic Stretching

Mark Mulligan

1 Feb 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 pri...

Cover image for Next Steps For Telco Music

Next Steps For Telco Music
The Revenue Or User Dilemma

Mark Mulligan

22 Dec 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 st...

Cover image for Streaming Music Health Check

Streaming Music Health Check
Streaming’s Watershed Moment

Mark Mulligan

22 Oct 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.

Cover image for Music Messaging Apps Vendor Landscape

Music Messaging Apps Vendor Landscape
Music Consumption Will Never Quite Be The Same Again

Mark Mulligan

29 Aug 2016

music apps youth generation edge

Music messaging apps are one of the most exciting and disruptive music consumer behaviours to emerge since file sharing first raised its head in the late 1990s. Apps like Musical.ly and Dubsmash have catalyzed entirely new ways for young music fans to engage with music, blurring the lines between creator and audience.

Cover image for State Of The YouTube Music Economy

State Of The YouTube Music Economy
Growing Tensions As Worldviews Collide

Mark Mulligan

11 Jul 2016

Streaming Streaming Music YouTube

YouTube is the music platform of choice for Millennials and Gen Z and is by far the most widely used streaming service on the planet. But YouTube and music rights holders have never been the closest of partners and intensive lobbying and counter lobbying in 2016 turned up the heat.

Cover image for Cross Border Listening

Cross Border Listening
Borderless Hits And Curated Playlists

Mark Mulligan

31 May 2016

Streaming Streaming Music curation

The US and the UK have long dominated the global music industry, thanks in no small part to the benefit of having that most exportable of languages English as their mother tongue. A heritage of decade after decade of stellar artists and music scenes of course also helps, but the first signs are emerging of smaller music markets being able to make t...

Cover image for Decoding The Live Event Consumer

Decoding The Live Event Consumer
How Social Media and Smartphones Are Redefining Live Experiences

Mark Mulligan

31 May 2016

live music concert goers gigs

The prolonged decline of the recorded music business is a mirror opposite of the dynamic growth in the live music sector, which itself is just one part of a booming live event marketplace. In the age of content abundance, consumers increasingly value the scarcity of live experiences.

Cover image for After The Album

After The Album
How Playlists Are Re-Defining Music Consumption

Mark Mulligan

30 Apr 2016

Subscriptions Streaming Music Subscriptions

Streaming hit a host of milestones in 2015, reaching 67.5 million subscribers and driving $2.9 billion of trade revenue, up 31% on 2014. While the competitive marketplace upped the ante, music services wielded curation to drive differentiation. Playlists have always been the core currency of streaming, but now more than ever they are becoming the b...

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

Leo Morel

31 Mar 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.

Cover image for The Steady Demise Of The CD Buyer

The Steady Demise Of The CD Buyer
How The Music Industry Is Sleepwalking Into A Revenue Collapse

Mark Mulligan

26 Feb 2016

cd revenue cd buyers Music buyers

The CD was the catalyst for the record labels’ apogee but now resembles a product strategy time bomb ticking away. With all the momentum of streaming it is tempting to discount CD buyers as an inconvenient legacy of the physical era, a format anomaly that will soon pass.

Cover image for State Of The Streaming Nation

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

Mark Mulligan

29 Jan 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.

Cover image for Next Steps For Music Video

Next Steps For Music Video
How Music Videos Miss Much Of The YouTube Opportunity

Tim Mulligan

21 Jan 2016

YouTube Twitter music video

The music video has undergone a major transformation since its original conceptualisation in the 1970s and commercialisation in the 1980s. Originally a tool to drive sales, MTV transformed it into a product in its own right and then YouTube did the same thing for the digital era.

Cover image for Telco Music Strategy

Telco Music Strategy
Ironing Out The Strategic Kinks As Objectives Evolve

Mark Mulligan

25 Nov 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 th...

© 2025 MIDiA Research Ltd. All Rights Reserved.