Reports: Subscriptions

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.

Breaking saturation
Music streaming pricing strategy

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Tatiana Cirisano and Perry Gresham

April 2025

Labels

Subscriptions

Streaming

Nearly two decades into the streaming era, established subscription markets like the US are approaching saturation. While growth pockets for standard subscriptions remain, the next stage is about raising average revenue per user through both price increases and user segmentation.

The audio creator opportunity
Audio creator behaviours and monetisation potential

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Rutger Rosenborg

March 2025

Creators

Subscriptions

Spotify

Historically, YouTubers and TikTok influencers have received the lion’s share of mainstream attention as a creator class – but audio creators are increasingly active on the same digital platforms and operating within the same formats. As a result, the audio creator has become a jack of all trades, moving between copyediting, audio editing, and video editing.

Socioeconomics of podcast listening
Engaging a higher value audience

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Rutger Rosenborg

October 2024

Creators

Subscriptions

Radio

Podcasts alone will struggle to monetise via subscriptions, leaving advertising as podcasts’ key source of revenue for the foreseeable future. However, podcasts do attract high-earning, high-spending audiences, which are often hard to reach with conventional advertising.

Bridging the creator gap
Monetising social video’s micro-communities

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Samuel Griffin and Ben Woods

April 2023

Subscriptions

YouTube

Twitch

The pandemic-induced boom in content creation has saturated social video platforms at a time when creators are battling a downturn in digital advertising revenues. These dual pressures of less exposure and dwindling financial returns have put pressure on mid-tier creators; the community that derives all their creator income from advertising, subscriptions, and donations, but have subscale audience to superstar creators.

Attention recession impacts on D2C growth

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Richard Broadhurst

July 2022

Subscriptions

Streaming

Spotify

Weekly active user (WAU) penetration for the top streaming services is now slowing with quarter-on-quarter growth effectively flat for the leading subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. Peak attention is now clearly here for video. The looming attention recession, which is already impacting the wider digital entertainment landscape, will exacerbate the greater underlying disengagement trends such as cancelling subscriptions that are starting to impact on video.

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.

Unlocking mainstream AVOD
The silver streamer catalyst

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Tim Mulligan

July 2021

Subscriptions

Streaming

Amazon

Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) has been championed as the free-to-access equivalent of subscription video on demand (SVOD). However, for AVOD to become the digital successor to free-to-view TV it needs to break out of its current niche user base.

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...

Spotify Q3 2020 Earnings
The Shift to Free

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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.

Music Subscriber Market Shares 4.0
Subscriptions Decouple from Revenue

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Mark Mulligan

September 2020

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 2020 and annual label trade revenue from full year 2015 to full year 2019 for 27 streaming services across 34 different markets.

Spotify Q2 2020 Earnings
In the Shadow of COVID

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Mark Mulligan

August 2020

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Spotify’s share price grew strongly in June 2020, with the markets responding positively to its podcast investments. However, while that increase was sustained throughout July, by mid-August the share price was heading back down to late-June levels.

COVID-19 and the Vulnerability of Pure Play Sports Streaming Services

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Alistair Taylor

April 2020

Subscriptions

US

UK

The postponement of annual competitions and major quadrennial events has highlighted just how heavily pay-TV and sport-centric streaming services’ value propositions rely on live sports. Filling schedules with re-runs, docuseries, interviews and archived footage are stopgaps unlikely to increase engagement.

Ad Receptiveness Consumer Survey
Country Snapshots

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Mark Mulligan

March 2020

Subscriptions

Marketing

Music streaming

Ad receptiveness consumer snapshots for US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Sweden, France, Netherlands, and Italy.

Video Consumer Survey
Country Snapshots

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Tim Mulligan

March 2020

Consumer behaviour

Subscriptions

Video

Video consumer survey country snapshots for US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Sweden, France, Italy, Netherlands and Mexico.

Spotify Q4 2019 Earnings
Great Year for Premium, Less So for Ad Supported

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Mark Mulligan

February 2020

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

2019 was another strong year for Spotify’s premium business, in which it saw off growing competition to retain its leading global market share. But it was also another year in which Spotify’s ad-supported business did not grow fast enough. Companies...

Music Subscriber Market Shares 3.0
The Big Three Dominate

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Mark Mulligan

December 2019

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 Q2 2019 for 23 streaming services across 30 different markets. Companies...

Spotify Earnings Q3 2019
Up on Most Counts

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Mark Mulligan

November 2019

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q3 2019 was a quarter of mixed fortunes for Spotify, with its subscriber base showing good, consistent growth, podcasts making a solid early showing, emerging markets demonstrating promise but ad revenue falling short. Companies and brands mentioned in...

Sports Rights
Measuring the ROI for Streaming

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Alistair Taylor

October 2019

Subscriptions

Amazon

subscribers

Measuring streaming sports audience engagement is paramount when determining which rights mix consumers are actually willing to pay for. Netflix has shown that in a saturated market, retaining consumer attention can cost twice as much as it did previously to retain the same level of user engagement.

Spotify Q2 2019 Earnings
Mature Markets Still the Engine Room of Growth

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Mark Mulligan

August 2019

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q2 2019 was another solid quarter for Spotify, adding the same number of subscribers it typically does in promotional quarters. Core metrics such as churn and average revenue per user (ARPU) all moved in the right direction, but Spotify remains out of contract with two major label partners and needs emerging markets’ subscriber growth to start picking up the slack before mature western markets slow.

Spotify Q1 2019 Earnings

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Mark Mulligan

May 2019

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q1 2019 was a quarter of milestones for Spotify, hitting 100 million subscribers, launching in India and becoming a podcast company. However, it was also a quarter in which a number of metrics started to soften. With the exception of ad revenue, none of these subtle shifts are enough on their own to provoke any serious concern.

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Showing 1 to 20 of 57 results.