Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

Business Strategy

The state of AI and music
How AI is reshaping creation, consumption, and value in the music industry

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Tatiana Cirisano and Olivia Jones

April 2026

music industry

Business Strategy

AI and Music

Several years into AI’s disruption of the music industry, the narrative is beginning to shift. What began as a “Wild West” moment, defined by lawsuits and existential debate, is slowly giving way to the first signs of structure, with recent major label earnings calls positioning AI-powered fan tools as central to future growth.

Multi-dimensionality in music isn’t new – but it’s overdue for a comeback

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Olivia Jones

23 Apr 2026

Business Strategy

Multi-dimensionality in music – that is, engaging in ways beyond simply listening to a song – has existed for decades. In the vinyl era, fans could read liner notes and look at album artwork while listening.

min read

Rebuilding TV in the creator era
UK video consumption and creation

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Ben Woods

April 2026

Creators

Streaming

France

The UK video market is at the centre of a once-in-a-generation shift. While linear TV still delivers huge reach and revenue for broadcasters, social platforms and global streaming services have already won the battle for daily attention. At the same time, nearly half of UK consumers now create content themselves, accelerating the rise of creators a...

How the creator economy is changing traditional entertainment's discovery, distribution, and supply

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Ben Woods

15 Apr 2026

Business Strategy

The creator economy used to be an adjacent entertainment ecosystem to traditional entertainment. Those days are numbered – if not over already. Creators are now a foundational component in how traditional entertainment produces and distributes content at scale.

min read

Podcasting’s next growth frontier: tackling the unconverted

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Laura Fisher

14 Apr 2026

Business Strategy

A lot of attention is being paid to the “rules of engagement” for podcasting: format preferences, video versus audio, and platform battles like YouTube versus Spotify. The industry is deeply focused on how and where audiences are consuming podcasts, and rightly so.

min read

Breaking the language barrier: AI’s next disruption in music

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Adham Nazir

9 Apr 2026

Business Strategy

American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once proclaimed that music is a universal language. Ironically, perhaps the only part of this universal language that isn’t universal is language itself. In the streaming era, it may seem easier than ever for musicians to reach listeners around the world, a...

min read

From feeds to events: How content creators are reshaping TV strategy

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Ben Woods

1 Apr 2026

Business Strategy

Content Creators

The playbooks for streaming TV services and creators are collapsing into one – but even so, misconceptions remain. Large parts of the traditional entertainment industry consider the engagement techniques in two lanes.

min read

How music’s ‘Instagram moment’ led to its fast fashion era

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Kriss Thakrar

27 Mar 2026

Business Strategy

The music industry is seeing unprecedented democratisation in both consumption and creation. Leading execs often point to the rise of consumer creation and the ‘Instagrammification’ of music as a growth engine.

min read

Global recorded music revenues up 9.4% in 2025

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Mark Mulligan

13 Mar 2026

Business Strategy

2025 was a good year for the recorded music business. After a modestly performing 2024, revenues grew by 9.4% in 2025 to reach $39.5 billion. See MIDiA’s Recorded music market 2025 | Rise of the fan economy and accompanying 12 sheet dataset for MUCH more detail.

min read

Recorded music market shares 2025
Expanded rights’ growing impact

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Mark Mulligan

March 2026

Streaming

Recorded music

revenue

Global recorded music revenues grew faster in 2025 than 2024, underpinned by a stable streaming sector and booming expanded rights revenue. Though expanded rights are still only a minority of total revenues, they are where the dynamic growth is and represent one of the key building blocks of tomorrow’s music business.

Premium podcasting
Diversifying success in the audio economy

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Laura Fisher

February 2026

France

Australia

mexico

The podcasting industry has matured beyond a niche interest into a mainstream media pillar. Its primary growth engine – the ad-supported, scale-at-all-costs model – is showing limitations. The next significant phase of audio evolution lies in the strategic cultivation ofpremium podcasting.

The Sidemen formula: Why TV formats belong on creator channels

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Ben Woods

25 Feb 2026

Business Strategy

Broadcasters and streamers keep asking how to work more closely with creators. Their standard approach is to commission a creator-led show, cast them in a film, or license their back catalogue for a streaming service.

min read

Streaming drivers
Retention and acquisition behaviours and attitudes

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Mark Mulligan

February 2026

Streaming

Music Subscriptions

France

This report presents data from three different MIDiA Research consumer surveys to explore the behaviours and attitudes that will shape music subscriber acquisition and retention over the coming years. Data is from these surveys: MIDiA Research Consumer Survey (09/25) US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico n = 7,000; (06/25) US, UK, Austra...

The music industry’s boiling frog moment

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Mark Mulligan

12 Feb 2026

Business Strategy

Throw a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will instantly jump out, terrified (and very hot). But put it in a pot of cool water and slowly increase the heat to boiling and it will stay there until it dies.

min read

Music creator survey
Career: Need versus want

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Mark Mulligan

February 2026

Spotify

Music creators

YouTube

This report is the second of two reports analysing the results of MIDiA’s 2025 global music creator survey, following Music creator survey | Creation: Rise of the new breed . While the former analyses music creation behaviours, this report focuses on music creators’ careers.

The problem with content

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Mark Mulligan

3 Feb 2026

Business Strategy

Everything these days is content – but the word is as problematic as the implication. ‘Content’ is defined by other . It is defined by filling something else, being part of something else. It is something that only exists within another context.

min read

From fans to superfans | What’s missing from the games industry

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Brandon Sutton

27 Jan 2026

Business Strategy

Audience Insight

The games industry is experiencing a moment of turbulence. A growing list of high-profile, high-budget titles, such as Mindseye and New World , have failed to meet commercial expectations. Increasingly, even investments in the hundreds of millions are no longer enough to guarantee a successful title.

min read

Music creator survey
Creation: Rise of the new breed

Cover image for Music creator survey

Mark Mulligan

January 2026

Creators

Labels

Music creators

This report is the first of two analysing the results of MIDiA’s 2025 global music creator survey, n = 2,109. This report explores the creation side of the equation and is aimed primarily at creator tools and services companies. The second report focuses on the music creators’ careers and is aimed more at labels, distributor, publishers, CMOs, ...

Indie labels are trading quantity for quality as they let go of the “volume game”: MIDiA’s latest label survey

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Olivia Jones

22 Jan 2026

Business Strategy

In MIDiA’s third annual independent label and distributor survey, “less is more” is the name of the game. Drawing from a survey of 144 labels and distributors that self-identify as independent, MIDiA’s latest report explores how the indie sphere is adapting to the rapidly-changing industry l...

min read

TikTok’s PineDrama points to social media’s anti-social trajectory

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Hanna Kahlert

20 Jan 2026

Business Strategy

The surge of short-form drama apps has a new entry in the US and Brazil: TikTok. The social video app, which has overturned the digital entertainment economy over the past five years, has now launched a standalone app called PineDrama.

min read

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