Reports: Music

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.

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Quarterly Digital Content Trends
Q2 2017

Mark Mulligan

31 Aug 2017

Streaming Streaming Music US

In this report, we present highlights of content trends from MIDiA’s Quarterly Brand Tracker, a survey fielded in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. This report explores how consumer behaviour evolved between Q4 2016 and Q2 2017 across music, video, games and social.

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Music Rights Disruption
The Transparency Agenda

Mark Mulligan

23 Aug 2017

music publishers Apple Spotify

Music rights have never been simple but now the complexity is reaching such a level that the digital music marketplace is beginning to buckle under the strain. With growing demand across the board for increased transparency, effectiveness and speed, the music rights landscape is facing an unprecedented period of innovation and disruption.

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Spotify Earnings
Growth Still Comes At A Cost

Mark Mulligan

19 Jun 2017

Streaming Streaming Music Spotify

Spotify’s 2016 accounts reveal strong growth in both revenue and user, as well as improved conversion to paid. But they also show growing losses (both in absolute and relative terms) for streaming music’s leading player. The health of Spotify is a bellwether for the health of the streaming music market and its current prognosis is that it is fi...

Cover image for Brazil Streaming Music Market

Brazil Streaming Music Market
Breaking The Mould

Mark Mulligan

12 Jun 2017

Streaming Streaming Music music bundles

The successful markets in the traditional music industry were those with highest levels of consumer spending. It was an industry biased towards North America and Europe. Part of the transformative potential of streaming is that it can monetize consumption rather than just spending, making a country’s population size as important as its spending p...

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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...

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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.

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The Platform-Agnostic Artist
Building Audiences In A Decentralized Media Landscape

Zach Fuller

5 May 2017

post platform platform agnostic decentralised audience

It used to be much simpler. Fixed programming formats in Television, Print and Radio meant you knew where an audience was and how long they would be there for, yet creators now find themselves in an echo chamber where the tyranny of choice means their potential audience never stays in the same place for long.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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 MIDiA Research Predictions 2017

MIDiA Research Predictions 2017
The Year Of The Platform

Karol Severin, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

30 Nov 2016

Streaming Streaming Music Paid Content

As we correctly predicted, 2016 was the year video ate the world. 2017 is going to be shaped by the battle for consumer attention through formatting and distribution wars. VR is likely to cede further ground to AR, bots will become established, while messaging apps add to their dominant position (even though user growth will slow).

Spotify User Profile
An Increasingly Mainstream Yet Digitally Sophisticated Audience

Mark Mulligan

17 Nov 2016

Subscriptions Streaming Spotify

Spotify is the poster child of streaming music, having done more than any other company to grow the segment and to prove the freemium business model at scale. It has built an active user base that outshines any other freemium music service, and through tactics such as telco bundles and pricing discounts continues to squeeze every last drop of oppor...

Soundcloud User Profile
Male Dominated Music Sophisticates

Mark Mulligan

17 Nov 2016

Streaming Streaming Music SoundCloud

SoundCloud is in many respects the odd one out in the audio streaming landscape. While the market is dominated by major label orientated subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Napster, SoundCloud has plotted a different path – one centred around independent content, creator uploads and free access.

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.

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Music in Virtual Reality
An Opportunity To Fill The Content Void

Zach Fuller

30 Sep 2016

music industry music videos virtual reality

A transformational technology in need of a meaningful content offering meets a wounded industry looking to new revenue streams. Despite their obvious differences, music (as one of the first and most vigorously disrupted mediums by the internet), and Virtual Reality (as a poster-child of technology’s brave new world), could yet prove natural allie...

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.

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