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Bifurcation theory

How today's music business will become two

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Karra, bifurcation, and YouTube’s gain

Mark Mulligan

8 Sep 2025

Product Strategy Streaming Music

A couple of weeks ago, electronic music artist Karra posted a video on YouTube about why she took her album down from streaming (one that she spent $100,000 making). She is now going to focus her efforts on YouTube (“an incredible platform for [her] artistry”), as well as selling content to musi...

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What traditional media can learn from sports fandom’s bifurcation moment

Ben Woods

15 Aug 2025

Fandom Entertainment Engagement

Too often, fans are categorised as one amorphous group. They can be lumped together regardless of their age, purchasing power, community engagement, or entertainment consumption behaviours. Fans are a diverse group and always have been.

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Creators versus creation
Tackling headwinds and bifurcation

Ben Woods

23 Dec 2024

Creators Music creators Business Strategy

Headwinds are threatening the creator economy’s potential. Audience growth, social platform monetisation, and content saturation are creating friction that is leaving creators frustrated. Now, the red lights are flashing on the dashboard: the average weekly time consumers spend creating and producing content has fallen for the first time since 20...

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Q2 2024 music metrics
Bifurcation is here

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

19 Sep 2024

Business Strategy

This report presents MIDiA consumer data for key music consumer behaviours and company financials for Q2 2024. Consumer data covered includes, streaming app usage, music behaviour, and streaming activities. Company financials covers record labels, music publishers, DSPs, and live music companies.

Q2 2024 music market metrics: bifurcation is here

Mark Mulligan

19 Sep 2024

Music streaming Streaming Bifurcation

There are so many music industry metrics and financial results flying around these days that it can be difficult to keep up with them all. Don’t worry, we’ve got you. MIDiA has just published the first edition of a brand-new report series: quarterly music metrics.

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Bifurcation theory
How today’s music business will become two

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

18 Apr 2024

Business Strategy

The music business is bifurcating, with streaming emerging as the place for mainstream music and lean-back consumption, and social as the spiritual home of fandom and the creator economy. In this report we will explore how today’s music business challenges are setting in motion a new, bifurcated business.

Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two

Mark Mulligan

18 Apr 2024

Bifurcation Bifurcation theory future of music

One of things we pride ourselves on at MIDiA is helping the marketplace peer over the horizon with disruptive, forward-looking ideas and vision. We have a long track record of doing this (you can find a list of report links at the bottom of this post).

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Built for the split: how Create Music Group is positioning itself for a bifurcated industry

Tatiana Cirisano

15 May 2025

Business Strategy Music music industry

The music industry is entering a new phase – less a fork in the road, than a slow but steady divergence . On one path sits the traditional record label model, which monetises music rights via scale of streams.

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Songwriter survey 2025
Reinvention

Tatiana Cirisano and Olivia Jones

10 Jul 2025

songwriters songwriters Audience Insight

Songwriters face many of the same issues as artists – and are often doubly impacted by them. The struggle to earn meaningful streaming income is chief among these challenges, yet songwriters do not have the same fallback options, such as merchandise and touring, as artists do.

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MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music publishing forecasts
A changing market

Mark Mulligan

18 Aug 2025

Music creators Music creators Music publishing

Throughout the 2020s the music publishing market has outperformed that of the labels, though total revenues remain significantly smaller. The origins of this disparity lie in streaming royalty splits but publishers and CMOs have fought hard to increase their share and to start from a better position with the emerging formats that will shape tomorro...

Hold or twist? The music industry’s innovation dilemma

Mark Mulligan

20 Nov 2024

Innovation Streaming streaming growth

As Clayton Christensen identified in The Innovator’s Dilemma, there are two types of innovation: sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. Sustaining innovation is what companies do to enhance existing business models, while disruptive innovation is typically driven by new entrants – insu...

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Will more artists release full songs to social media in 2025?

Tatiana Cirisano

19 Sep 2024

Social media TikTok Music streaming

It is now a standard part of most music rollouts to release a clip of the song on social video platforms before it hits streaming. This makes sense when you think of social media as a marketing tool. But as social video has ascended (and arguably become more about entertainment than connecting socia...

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What Drake got wrong — and right — with 100 Gigs

Tatiana Cirisano

15 Aug 2024

Drake fragmented fandom Bifurcation theory

On August 6th , with no prior announcement, Drake unloaded 100 gigabytes’ worth of content, including songs and video clips, to a personal website and directed fans there via his Instagram burner account.

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Recorded music market shares 2024
Widening gaps

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

13 Mar 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.

‘Song of the summer’ may be dead, but 2024 was the summer of song

Tatiana Cirisano

22 Aug 2024

fragmented fandom Music streaming Social media

Over the past few years, MIDiA has often remarked at the lack of a “song of the summer” . There was once a singular undeniable hit each summer, one that everyone could agree on, like ‘One Dance’ was to 2016 or ‘Despacito’ to 2017.

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What TikTok and Spotify have in common

Tatiana Cirisano

2 May 2024

TikTok Spotify music industry

In all likelihood, it has been years since anyone working in music went a week without talking about TikTok. In fact, the same probably goes for anyone with an internet connection. The platform’s clash — and now, reunion — with Universal Music Group; potential to be banned in the U.

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TikTok highlights the importance of publishing — and lack of songwriter services

Tatiana Cirisano

29 Feb 2024

Social media TikTok songwriters

It is no news flash that the music business has a reputation for undervaluing songwriters. Despite being arguably the most important part of the song, the shift to streaming has been even more disastrous for songwriters’ remuneration than artists.

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Kendrick vs. Drake is a rare ‘mainstream’ moment — and streaming is on the sidelines

Tatiana Cirisano

9 May 2024

Social media Bifurcation theory music industry

Over the last week, it has been hard to go anywhere, or speak to anyone, without some mention of the epic diss track battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. When is the last time we could say that about a pop culture moment? The domination of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is arguably the only bit of m...

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TikTok’s music master plan is coming into focus

Tatiana Cirisano

20 Jun 2024

TikTok Social media music consumption

Oh how the tables have turned. Just a few months removed from its very public clash with Universal Music Group over music licences, TikTok is reportedly looking to buy up music rights of its own. Not only would this ease TikTok’s reliance on licences, but it would also presumably allow TikTok to p...

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Live and direct: lessons for streamers from the appeal of online radio

Laura Fisher

20 Mar 2025

Audience Insight Music Audio

Key insights from this blog: Online radio has a growing audience, with further opportunity to capitalise on what is missing from music streaming We explore why online radio is gaining popularity – covering the elements of loyalty, dynamism, and humanity – and explain how this connects to MIDiA's...

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