Superfans Reports from MIDiA Research

The fandom eclipse
How fan content is competing with IP

Tatiana Cirisano and Ben Woods

June 2025

Fan-made content is evolving from a support act to a fully-fledged competitor to entertainment IP. This is creating tension between IP holders and the fan community. Both parties want the IP they love to thrive in a saturated entertainment landscape. This report will unpack whether entertainment IP holders should view fan content creation as an opp...

The superfans of music superstars
Identity and cut-through

Cover image for The superfans of music superstars

Olivia Jones

February 2025

Labels

US

Artists

Fandom is becoming the music industry’s golden goose, with labels focusing on building and monetising superfan bases for their top artists. However, superfan behaviours are changing in response to oversaturation and hyper-fragmentation. What once worked for measuring and monetising fandom will not work the same in the future.

Music merchandise demand
Who, what, and where

Cover image for Music merchandise demand

Tatiana Cirisano

October 2024

Consumer behaviour

cds

Spotify

The music merchandise market has transformed, with significantly more artists selling merch and more product variety than ever before. The traditional line between “hard” and “soft” merch is blurring as new generations buy vinyl as a collectible keepsake, rather than a consumption format.

The state and future of music fandom
Unleashing fan creativity

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Tatiana Cirisano

August 2023

Spotify

YouTube

SoundCloud

Streaming is buckling under the weight of new music being released every day, listenership is fragmenting, and artificial intelligence is poised to intensify these challenges. The music industry’s next era of growth lies in monetising fandom, not consumption.

Kill the campaign
Music marketing needs branding, not direct response

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.

Building a fan economy with Fan-Powered Royalties

Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Perry Gresham

July 2022

Free Report

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...

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...

Music consumer survey, Q3 2021
A new generation leans forward

Cover image for Music consumer survey, Q3 2021

Tatiana Cirisano

February 2022

Creators

Radio

radio audiences

As streaming subscriptions rise and music increasingly competes with other forms of media for consumers’ limited attention spans, lean-back listening activities are taking precedence over those which are lean-forward. But the full picture is far more varied.

Fandom drivers
From fan psychology to NFT demand

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin, Srishti Das and Tatiana Cirisano

January 2022

superfan

Spotify

merchandise

Fandom is entertainment’s growth currency, yet it remains both under-valued and poorly understood. While other entertainment currencies can be accurately measured (number of streams, number of sales, number of views, etc.) it is only the effects of fandom that can be quantified (number of likes / shares, merchandise sales, etc.

Recovery Economics
Music, Games, Live Streams and the Future of Concerts

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin and Keith Jopling

May 2020

live music

live

Artists

In April 2020 Travis Scott’s Fortnite event pulled in 27 million players. While this was happening, the global artist community was scrambling to plug the income and engagement gap caused by COVID-19’s cessation of live music, by turning to live streaming.

Reports: Superfans