Reports: 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 industry is indeed setting a path that is not being pulled down by recessionary conditions as much as many other industries.

In this report MIDiA presents, contrasts and analyses headline financial metrics of 12 leading music industry companies across labels, publishers, streaming and live. The companies tracked represent more than half of total global music industry revenues across these sectors.

Streaming’s first achievement was becoming a long-term successor to retail, now it has its sights set on doing the same to radio. Even though the revenue per user is much smaller, the addressable market is far higher. Streaming’s post-radio strategy has the potential to be much more far reaching and impactful than subscriptions have been in terms of audience impact at scale.

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 metric, while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially.

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 market both culturally and commercially.

The global digital music industry may only be growing steadily (5% in 2013) but beneath the headline number is a richly varied picture of different services, diverse regional growth rates and competing business models. To better understand this marketplace, MIDiA Research conducted a Global Music Services Tracker.