Reports

Social media is entering a new phase of innovation. Facebook’s trio of applications, alongside Snapchat, Twitter and other incumbents, still have market dominance. However, the rapid growth of TikTok, Discord and Clubhouse since the coronavirus-prompted lockdowns, alongside a migration to digital-first life, are early indicators of demand for – and adoption of – social platforms that lend themselves to lean-in entertainment behaviours.

Introduction – Rebalancing the song economy After half a decade of streaming-driven growth the global music business hit a speed bump in the shape of the COVID-19 pandemic. Live music stopped in an instant, radio boomed then dipped and physical sales plummeted as stores closed.

In today’s music business, the consumer boom is rapidly leading to a creator bust. For the music industry to untangle itself from this dysfunctional loop, it needs to find new ways of monetizing fandom, not simply relying on consumption. Artists need new ways to connect and transact more productively with their immediate fan bases.

COVID-19 has expedited the need for rights holders and teams to generate digital engagement beyond the pure play live broadcast. Games and esports became big attention economy winners during the early stages of the pandemic and first lockdown. Rights holders desperate to maintain connectivity with fans looked to esports to drive engagement and maintain relevance.

This slide deck presents consumer demand for video subscription services and streaming consumption, with detail for streaming services and video consumption preferences. The data is pulled from MIDiA’s Q4 2020 Consumer Survey fielded in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea, and Brazil.

The second iteration of this project is available to download here . Be The Change: Women Making Music Key insights Gendered expectations have skewed recognition and reward in the music industry: of 401 women creators around the world, 81% think that it is harder for female artists to get recognition than male artists Linked to this is the fact that there are not as many female role models for independent creators (81% agree, 49% ‘agree strongly’) Almost two-thirds of female creators identified sexual harassment or objectification as a key challenge, making it by far the most widely-cited problem Sexualisation and objectification are a consequence (or symptom) of unbalanced power dynamics, as shown by the next ‘big three challenges’: ageism (identified by 38%), lack of access to male-dominated industry resources (36%) and lower pay (27%) These major challenges are symptomatic of deeper issues of systemic male dominance permeating industry attitudes and behaviours; over 90% of our respondents said that they had experienced unconscious bias – nearly half of them frequently Music composition, production and sound has long been connected primarily with men, so it is no surprise that the majority of female creators (63%) feel excluded from the composition and production, which makes this aspect of music creation highly ‘genderized’ Although the overall representation of women in society has increased over the past few decades, 84% of women still feel that there exists a perception that women are expected to take on the primary role of parenting duties.

Digital-first access has shaped mainstream consumption, but for digital natives, it has also shaped their core behaviours. Music consumption is now fragmented across artists, becoming a personalised, anytime anywhere activity – making the value exchange more niche and personal.

In the attention economy, entertainment consumption is intertwined and competition straddles formats and genres. The same applies to fandom. Entertainment fans are fans of not just multiple subgenres within one entertainment category, but instead across multiple entertainment formats.

The global pandemic turned the music industry upside down. While live was decimated throughout 2020, after an initial downturn, the recorded music market returned to growth and finished the year with an acceleration that suggests a strong 2021 lies ahead.

The US market is starting to see initial signs of fatigue as the D2C disruptors begin to reduce monthly user engagement among the three dominant incumbent subscription video on demand services. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu all saw modest dips in weekly active use in Q4 2020.

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...

The catalogue race is on Music catalogues are changing hands for serious sums of money. The race to acquire the songwriters’ share is on, and it is speeding up. However, while that race is a sprint, what happens after is a marathon. For the acquirers – Hipgnosis and its cohort of competitors, publishing majors like UMPG or indies like BMG – the return on investment is very much a longer-term game.

Digital connections have filled the void left by real-world activities, globalising culture and experience. Yet this comes at the cost of deepening divides in trust and perspective. Changing economic circumstances have brought about a demographic dichotomy of age and income.

OTT Distribution and Partnerships A MIDiA Research Presentation for StreamTV Growth Summit 2021

2020 was a year like no other. With large swathes of the population confined to their homes for portions of the year, audiences had more time on their hands and more money in their pockets. These conditions created a boom in entertainment consumption, throwing up a mixture of intuitive trends and unexpected winners.

Digital natives are more likely to consume non-live sports than older, traditional sports fans, which presents rights holders and broadcasters with untapped potential for monetisation by harnessing and actioning this insight. While the most valuable sports audience currently remains among pay-TV subscribers, planning for meaningful non-broadcast revenues through digital-native engagement is now crucial for pandemic mitigation, as well as addressing the needs of the underserved fans of the future.

Music companies are flocking to explore partnerships with games companies. Seeking a foothold in a fast-growing market, music companies are often looking for easy wins that fit traditional licensing models that monetise consumption. These however, typically do not align with the games industry’s spend-centric worldview.

COVID-19 removed the constraints imposed by peak attention, leading to a surge in home-based entertainment consumption and streaming adoption. Fortuitous timing, enforced home working and the end of the commute, tied in with the need to entertain home-bound children, has greatly accelerated direct-to-consumer (D2C) adoption.

As streaming reaches maturity in many of the largest music markets and middle-tier artists struggle to make ends meet with the live music hiatus, the time has come for a music product strategy re-boot – for a bold, new wave of music products that look to build beyond streaming, delivering increased income for both rights holders and creators.

Touted as the home of the next billion online consumers, India’s rapid adoption of digital media services has been driven by the explosion in smartphone adoption over the last few years. While per capita smartphone penetration still significantly lags behind developed markets, India’s 1.