Product Strategy | MIDiA Research

A model for a new music streaming industry

Mark Mulligan

18 Mar 2025

The music industry is approaching a pivot point. On the one hand, things look positive: we have UMG’s Streaming 2.0 , artist centric licensing, the impending launch of supremium and expanded rights revenue hitting $4.

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Audio creators are the creator economy's unsung heroes

Rutger Rosenborg

14 Mar 2025

Business Strategy

Audio

Podcasts

Key insights from this blog: MIDiA's latest audio report, ' The audio creator opportunity ' , argues that brands and platforms can no longer afford to neglect audio creators Audio creators are a fast-growing force in the creator economy, driving demand for better tools and marketing They are more li...

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The audio creator opportunity
Audio creator behaviours and monetisation potential

Cover image for The audio creator opportunity

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 ...

Recorded music market 2024: $36.2 billion, up 6.5%

Mark Mulligan

13 Mar 2025

Music

Recorded music

Business Strategy

MIDiA has just released its annual recorded music market shares report. Clients can access the full report and the accompanying massive (!) data set here . For the rest of you, here are some highlights from the report.

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Recorded music market shares 2024
Widening gaps

Cover image for Recorded music market shares 2024

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

March 2025

Music revenue

Streaming

Spotify

After a buoyant 2023, recorded music revenue growth slowed again in 2024, the fourth year of alternating growth rates. It was a year of varied fortunes across both formats and labels, but perhaps most crucially of all, a growing divergence between label streaming growth and DSP growth.

Why social is a double-edged sword for streaming TV

Ben Woods

7 Mar 2025

Business Strategy

Video

SVOD

TV shows, movies, and social creator content are lane hopping in search of engagement. It is common practice now for SVOD services to distribute one or several episodes for free on YouTube and TikTok in the hope of transforming social video viewers into SVOD subscribers.

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Scenes are the new markets
Why and how entertainment should go niche

Cover image for Scenes are the new markets

Tatiana Cirisano

March 2025

Marketing

monetisation

Entertainment

In 2022, MIDiA introduced scenes as a new lens for marketing music. This report expands on the concept, reintroducing scenes – groups of people whose shared interests, aesthetics, values, behaviours, and vernacular have coalesced into a shared lifestyle – as a wider business strategy reset for all of entertainment.

Streaming TV’s fight on social’s stage
Tactics for a short-form video future

Cover image for Streaming TV’s fight on social’s stage

Ben Woods

February 2025

Streaming

live

YouTube

Streaming TV and social platforms have long competed for audience attention but from separate lanes. Now, these roads are merging in the social platforms’ favour as the likes of YouTube and TikTok evolve into kaleidoscopes of entertainment content, from vlogs and music videos to live sport and TV series.

The case for more digestable games: Over a third of console and PC gamers play LESS than 5 hours a week

Rhys Elliott

20 Feb 2025

YouTube

Netflix

TikTok

The attention economy is oversaturated. Games are not just competingwith other games but with TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, and well ... life. But the games industry – especially premium games on console and PC – has a unique twofold challenge: Supply : New AAA games can take five years or more to m...

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What the Reuters AI copyright decision means for the music industry

Tatiana Cirisano

20 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Streaming

Music

Last week saw a major AI copyright case judgement in the US – and it fell in favour of human creators. The case stems all the way back to 2020, when Thomson Reuters sued the legal AI startup ROSS Intelligence, alleging that it reproduced Reuters’ legal research to create a competing, AI-powered ...

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How streaming platforms are adapting in the race for affordable content

Rutger Rosenborg

19 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Spotify

YouTube

Music is expensive – not for consumers, but for companies who have to license music copyrights from rightsholders. It is a large reason Spotify did not have a full year of profitability until 2024 . What helped the company get there? Podcasting.

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Social 2025
Navigating platforms for fan power

Hanna Kahlert

February 2025

Creators

Spotify

Social

The biggest apps are in the process of disruption. TikTok’s uncertain future and Meta’s apps relaxing content restrictions and fact checking will constitute greater challenges for creators, advertisers, and audiences looking to use and benefit from these platforms.

How PlayStation broke its hardware and active user records in Q4

Rhys Elliott

13 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Netflix

TikTok

Sony released its financial results for calendar Q4 2024. Here are the high-level results: Sony generated revenues of $27.9 billion As always, its Game & Network Services (G&NS) Segment – PlayStation – was the biggest segment (38%) Sony Music accounted for 11% and Sony Pictures for 9% of...

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Why Spotify only hit profitability now (but will do so again)

Mark Mulligan

13 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Spotify

Streaming

Spotify finally registered its first profitable year in 2024. It has hit net profit in individual quarters before – most recently in Q3 2023 – but this is the first year it was profitable throughout the year.

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Audio’s entertainment value
Examining audio listeners’ cross-entertainment lives

Cover image for Audio’s entertainment value

Rutger Rosenborg

February 2025

music industry

Music streaming

Content

Typically, the marketing team for a games company or TV show would not be thinking of audiobooks and podcast listeners as a key consumer segment to address. Yet, podcast and audiobook listeners are digitally sophisticated and spend more time and money than the consumer average on most forms of entertainment – including games, music, and video.

Nintendo’s earnings highlight Mario's unfaltering popularity, despite the Switch running out of steam

Rhys Elliott

6 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Games

super mario

Nintendo released its nine-month earnings ending December 31, 2024. Its revenues were $6.1 billion, dropping 31.4% year on year, with: Nintendo’s dedicated platforms (hardware, software, subscriptions, and accessories) accounting for 94.

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MIDiA’s analysts answer questions on their 2025 predictions

Karol Severin

5 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Music

Games

We are delighted by the overwhelmingly positive response and discussions sparked during our 2025 predictions webinar. We are grateful for all the engaging questions you asked during the session. Though we were unable to get through all of the excellent questions in the one-hour window, we certainly ...

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Meta-podcasts are coming for the news, not the podcast industry

Rutger Rosenborg

5 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

YouTube

Google

Although Google has arguably cornered the podcast market through YouTube already, by employing AI, the company may be making it even harder for competitors to catch up.In October 2024, MIDiA covered the development of NotebookLM and its ability to disrupt the informational and educational podcast sp...

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AI is reshaping the music creator economy, and that change will reshape the music business

Mark Mulligan

3 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Music

Creator economy

MIDiA is pleased to announce the release of not one but two new music creator economy reports. These are our latest " State of the music creator economy "and " Music creator tools forecasts "reports. These annual deliverables have quickly become industry benchmarks, and if you operate in the music c...

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The games market will grow by 4.6% in 2025 – in line with the global inflation rate

Rhys Elliott

31 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Fandom

Games

We just published our flagship games report MIDiA Research’s Global Games Forecasts 2025–2031 and its accompanying dataset. What you need to know: The games market is mature , so double-digit growth is a fantasy and the industry will only see slight growth going forward The global number of game...

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