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.

AI and the future of music
The future is already here

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Mark Mulligan, Hanna Kahlert and Tatiana Cirisano

May 2023

Spotify

SoundCloud

Netflix

Unlike most new technology hype cycles, the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) has on the world is already surpassing expectations. Within the music industry, AI will largely be an enabler and accelerant of already-existing trends and market shifts: the growth of self-releasing artists, the consumerisation of music-making, and the resulting o...

US millennial snapshot
A looming generational blind spot

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Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

April 2023

Spotify

YouTube

Deezer

In the US, 25-34-year-olds are the music industry’s most valuable segment. Yet their relationship with streaming is tenuous. Streaming is not meeting these consumers’ need for a more social, less algorithm-driven experience. What is more, they appear most likely to give their subscriptions up.

Podcasts and music streaming
Mirrored growth

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Annie Langston

April 2023

Apple

Apple

iTunes

The economic recession, and related layoffs at major podcasting divisions, have some questioning the future of the format. However, podcasts are following a similar trajectory as music did in its transition to streaming and have reached critical mass — 26% consumer penetration — faster than music streaming subscriptions did.

Recorded music market 2022
Reality bites

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Mark Mulligan

March 2023

TuneCore

Music streaming

Kobalt

Following a spectacular year of growth in 2021, global recorded music revenue growth slowed significantly in 2022, due to the combined impact of global economic headwinds and growth slowdown in mature streaming markets. Context, though, is everything – not many industries can deliver solid growth while the global economy is in turmoil, ad markets...

Music’s Instagram moment
The social music creation revolution

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Tatiana Cirisano

March 2023

Consumer behaviour

Apple

Spotify

Social media has steadily integrated music, and music creation tools have steadily become more social. These trends are converging, accelerated by shifts in consumer behaviour and artificial intelligence (AI). The result could be a new set of music creation and re-creation tools, integrated within social platforms and geared towards casual consumer...

Kill the campaign
Music marketing needs branding, not direct response

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Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

February 2023

Streaming

Spotify

Marketing

The debate over a new streaming royalties regime is capturing attention, but economics will not fix the underlying paradigm shifts that are the true cause for streaming’s problems: there is not enough money to go around for the ballooning amount of music on streaming services, and passive consumption is the new norm.

Music discovery snapshot Q3 2022
Fandom under threat

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Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

January 2023

Spotify

YouTube

YouTube Music

Despite the hyper-saturated music landscape, music discovery is generally not a problem for most consumers. Gen Z and millennials have similar music discovery habits, but gen Z struggle slightly more with discovery and are more influenced by TikTok, while millennials are perhaps the last generation to see radio as a main source of music discovery.

Music industry earnings Q3 2022
Pre-recession growth

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Mark Mulligan

December 2022

Spotify

Pandora

Slacker

The early 2020s saw an influx of capital into the music business, with the promise of music rights being an asset class that was uncorrelated with the wider economy. The irony is that as music catalogue investments slowed (due to rising costs of capital), the first nine months of 2022 saw the music business deliver a performance that suggests the i...

Music subscriber market shares 2022
Chinese Dragon

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares 2022

Mark Mulligan

December 2022

Business Strategy

As the world edges towards a recession, the music streaming market continues to stand strong. Despite indications of slowdown in some markets, the global music subscriber market remains buoyant. Growth, though, is uneven, with a number of leading streaming services outpacing the rest, especially the Chinese ones, which are now setting the global pa...

DSP user profiles
Small is beautiful

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Mark Mulligan

November 2022

Spotify

YouTube

Deezer

With streaming music now in its mature growth stage in most leading music markets, differentiation will be key to unlocking further growth pockets. While this will likely require innovation in both product and licensing, there are already clear signs that the streaming services are developing userbases with distinct and varied behaviours and charac...

A field of all levels
Strategizing music’s attention economy

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Tatiana Cirisano

November 2022

Consumer behaviour

Music creators

Record labels

Over roughly the past decade, each stage in the evolution of the attention economy accelerated the pace of fragmentation and oversaturation in music, unearthing new challenges for each micro-generation of artists. With all these generations now competing in the same playing field, artist strategy depends strongly on the era in which they rose to pr...

Streaming’s next growth phase
The necessity of differentiation

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Tatiana Cirisano

October 2022

Apple

Spotify

YouTube

DSPs have long been able to grow their subscriber bases despite all offering essentially the same experience. Yet the freemium model is reaching a saturation point, putting slow but steady pressure on DSPs to find new ways to grow subscribers and revenue.

State of the music creator economy
Post-lockdown growth

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Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

September 2022

Apple

Spotify

live

The Covid pandemic created a unique catalyst for the music creator economy. More time on hands and more cash in pockets gave novices and veterans alike the opportunity to spend both more time and money making music. Though the pandemic was a peak, it also marked the start of a new era for the music creator economy across every one of its aspects, f...

Content is king, distribution is queen but retention is revolutionary

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Tim Mulligan and Hanna Kahlert

September 2022

Video

Music

Games

Retention is the new cornerstone of subscription in an era of accelerating disruption. On the 22nd of September, 2022, at 4:30 pm BST, MIDiA's lead video analyst, Tim Mulligan, will be joined by Nada Arnot, SVP of Marketing at BritBox, Nii Mantse Addy, CMO and Head of Marketing at Philo, Nina Laricheva, CEO of Marquee TV, and Hanna Kahlert, Media a...

Scenes
A new lens for music marketing

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Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

August 2022

Spotify

YouTube

Facebook

Entertainment consumption and fandom are fragmenting in the internet era as a result of the steady erosion of linear audiences, the rise of asynchronous consumption, and the increased sophistication of personalisation algorithms. Consequently, identity and culture are fragmenting as well.

Music sync market forecast
Production libraries raise the pitch

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Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

July 2022

YouTube

SoundCloud

Netflix

Amid fragmenting fandom and the attention recession, sync is more important than ever as a tool for both revenue generation and marketing. There are also dozens of emerging use cases for sync, from creator content to fitness platforms and virtual spaces in the evolving metaverse.

Building a fan economy with Fan-Powered Royalties

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Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Perry Gresham

July 2022

Creators

artist income

Streaming economics

Music streaming has helped the music industry return to growth over the past decade, but many creators feel left behind. The streaming economy has reached a point where the creator remuneration gap can no longer be ignored. It is no secret that many music artists are dissatisfied with the relationship between the consumption of their music on strea...

MIDiA Research 2022-2030 global music forecasts
The new era of growth

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Mark Mulligan

July 2022

Business Strategy

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 labeltrade 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 detai...

The future of music
The rise of a counterculture industry

Cover image for The future of music

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

June 2022

Consumer behaviour

Spotify

Music creators

Music streaming and the attention recession have turned music into a background activity. Artists en masse are struggling to cut through the noise, realising that streaming is neither a place to build deeper relationships with fans nor to generate meaningful income.

Music creator survey, Q4 2021
Redefining success

Cover image for Music creator survey, Q4 2021

Tatiana Cirisano

May 2022

Creators

Spotify

artist income

As the barriers to music creation continue to lower, more creators enter the field, yet it is becoming harder than ever to earn a living through music, with a finite amount of revenue being split ever more ways. The majority of professional music creators do not earn meaningful income through their craft and must cobble together income from a diver...

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Showing 61 to 80 of 258 results.