Reports

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.

Cover image for Fighting Free With Free

Fighting Free With Free
How YouTube Usurped BitTorrent

Mark Mulligan

17 Apr 2015

Streaming free free Streaming

Ever since Napster raised its head in 1999 the music industry has been fighting a rear guard action against free. BitTorrent picked up Napster’s baton and ran with it, begetting music industry’s cartoon villain The Pirate Bay. Now though free has both changed and achieved far greater scale through licensed streaming services.

Video Market Country Profile: US
The Global Online Video Powerhouse

Tim Mulligan

8 Apr 2015

Netflix smart tvs connected tvs

The United States is fast approaching the point where online TV viewing becomes a mainstream consumer activity. This has been facilitated by near universal levels of internet connectivity and smartphone adoption. Leading the charge on its home turf is Netflix, experiencing double digit growth since 2010.

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Mobile App Discovery
Imperfect Tools And The Overspend Or Die Dilemma

Karol Severin

7 Apr 2015

Apple Discovery Google

Discovery is accentuating the app economy divide. Superstar app developers can afford TV ads and supercharged digital campaigns to distinguish their apps from the ever-growing pool of competitors, leaving smaller developers increasingly locked out. Supercell and King’s combined $1bn annual marketing spend is not only out of reach for most, it als...

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Radio’s Streaming Disruption
How Streaming And Smartphones Disrupt Radio Audiences

Karol Severin

12 Mar 2015

Streaming UK Sweden

Along with TV, radio is one of the most pervasive media platforms on the planet. It is also still one of the key drivers of music discovery. But things are changing. Historically Radio broadcasters had their audiences protected in the safe confines of dedicated devices and direct competition was thin on the ground.

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YouTube Disruptors
The Companies That Aim To Challenge YouTube In Its Second Decade

Tim Mulligan

10 Mar 2015

YouTube Taylor Swift traditional media content producers

YouTube’s supercharged success over the last decade shows signs of having created a monopolistic mindset in the company that leaves it ripe for disruption. Its runaway success as both a content discovery platform and an end destination for video consumption, paradoxically also means it is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

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YouTube Channel Growth
How Native Content Strategies Will Underpin Success

Tim Mulligan

5 Mar 2015

YouTube 10th anniversary viral stars traditional media content producers

YouTube’s first decade established the video category that is still widely referred to as short form video, even though it is only music videos that any longer cling religiously to the few minutes format. Ten years on, YouTube’s channel hierarchy is emerging not just as the key navigation interface but also the foundation of a new content creat...

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YouTube Channels
How YouTube Stars Build Engaged Audiences

Tim Mulligan

5 Mar 2015

YouTube traditional media content producers YouTube Channels

With 1 billion monthly users, YouTube is the third most popular online destination globally making it the world’s de facto pure play video destination. A whole generation has grown up with YouTube as their preferred video content destination, most often bypassing traditional TV brands.

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Apple Subscriptions
How Lightning Could Strike Twice For Apple

Mark Mulligan

3 Mar 2015

Subscriptions Streaming music downloads

Apple’s 21st renaissance all started with music, with the iPod. With the succession of successful products that followed, Apple perfected its early follower model, waiting for others to establish markets and for them to bleed out on the cutting edge of innovation before sweeping in to dominate.

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Music Piracy in Brazil
Assessing the Impact on Music Consumption

Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2015

consumer behavior Consumer behaviour Music consumers

During the last decade Brazil underwent great economic advances, removing a considerable part of its population from poverty, placing them into the consumer market. Now, these Brazilian citizens aspire to smartphones and tablets in order to access digital content and services.

Cover image for The Aficionado Impact

The Aficionado Impact
How Super Fans Changing Spending Patterns Are Dragging Down Music Sales

Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2015

superfan consumer behavior Consumer behaviour

Total revenue growth in streaming heartland markets in 2012 and 2013 painted a strong picture for the streaming era. But by 2014 much of that growth had transformed into decline. Neither trends provide definitive evidence for the case for streaming but both point to the wafer thin margins between growth and decline in the music market.

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Next Generation Music Products
Monetising Super Fans With Interactive Artist Subscriptions

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2015

Music Products Innovation Fandom

There is a growing disconnect between fan engagement and fan monetisation. Facebook and YouTube took artist-fan engagement to the masses, but music spending is still falling. Aficionados, the super fans that drive most revenue, are both being taken for granted and reducing their spend, trading down from multiple albums a month to 9.

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Profiling The Paid Content Consumer
Music Still Leads In A Niche But Growing Sector

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2015

Subscriptions Paid Content apps

Paid content used to be one of the web’s backwaters. Change, however, is afoot, thanks to innovations such as app stores, tablets and media streamers. Music, video, games and books all compete for attention and wallet share on consumers’ connected devices.

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US Music Consumer Deep Dive
The Growing Impact Of Free

Tim Mulligan

7 Jan 2015

Music consumers Streaming Music downloads

The world’s largest music market continues to set the pace for digital music adoption among the large music markets. Tech savvy young Americans are increasingly embracing consumption over ownership models and in turn are helping change the revenue landscape.

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Music Consumer Segmentation
From Lagging Indicators To Leading Indicators

Mark Mulligan

18 Dec 2014

consumer behavior Consumer behaviour Music consumers

Consumer music behaviour, tastes and attitudes vary dramatically. The ability to delineate discrete segments is crucial for targeting music services and for artist marketing. Over the last half decade the music industry has come to understand importance of consumer segmentation in understanding music fans and buyers.

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Holiday Gifting
Music’s Gifting Digital Double Whammy

Mark Mulligan

11 Dec 2014

consumer behavior Consumer behaviour Music consumers

The music industry has long placed supreme importance on the holiday season and it is a habit that dies hard. Release schedules are still geared towards the period and seasonal sales expectations, or least hopes, remain high. Yet gifting has been one of the biggest victims of the digital transition with digital gifting failing to capture the imagin...

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The App Bubble Burst
The Coming App Economy Correction

Karol Severin

5 Nov 2014

US UK France

In May 2014 we warned about potential risks of the Superstar App Economy. Too few apps were taking most of the revenue. Investors funded huge marketing and development budgets in a bid to create mega hits, but in the process raised the barriers to entry.

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Unlocking YouTube
How YouTube’s Music Key Will Impact Subscriptions

Mark Mulligan

16 Oct 2014

consumer behavior Consumer behaviour Subscriptions

YouTube is the globe’s leading digital music service but it delivers comparatively little back to the music industry in direct revenue. Even the one billion dollars paid out in Content ID revenues only represents $0.14 for each of its one billion users per year, since the launch of Content ID in 2007.

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Global Digital Music Services Benchmark
The Digital Music Marketplace

Mark Mulligan

5 Sep 2014

Subscriptions Streaming Music Music Subscriptions

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.

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The Streaming Effect
Assessing The Impact Of Streaming Music Behaviour

Mark Mulligan

15 Aug 2014

Subscriptions Streaming Music Music Subscriptions

Streaming has arrived and is here to stay, that much is clear. What is not is how it will impact existing music revenue streams. Though neither a business model nor a product, streaming is the lens through which the irresistible force of the shift from ownership to access is best understood.

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Content Connectors
How the Coming Digital Content Revolution Will Change Everything

Mark Mulligan

12 Aug 2014

Subscriptions Apple Spotify

Content Connectors, devices such as Apple TV, Google’s Chromecast, Amazon Kindle Fire TV and Roku, are set to transform the way in which mainstream consumers interact with digital content. Current adopters of these devices are the most valuable paid content consumers across all content genres, not just the video for which Content Connectors are b...

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