independent

MIDiA’s 2025 independent label survey

Mark Mulligan

28 Aug 2025

Business Strategy Fandom survey

It’s that time of year again, MIDiA’s independent label and distributor survey is now live and waiting for your contributions! Click here to take the survey. The annual survey is an opportunity for the global independent community to have its voice heard – and this year is one of the most impo...

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With “short-form audiobooks”, Spotify has become an independent book publisher

Rutger Rosenborg

19 Mar 2025

Product Strategy Spotify Audio

On the heels of Spotify’s embrace of AI-generated audiobooks through their partnership with ElevenLabs, the streaming giant is looking to further democratise and monetise audiobooks. On March 13, Spotify’s For the Record blog announced a new publishing program aimed at independent authors publis...

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State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation

Mark Mulligan

31 Oct 2024

market shares label market shares Independent labels

MIDiA is excited to announce our latest report “ State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation”. It represents the most extensive piece of research we have ever done. Through a combination of our annual Independent Label and Distributor Survey and an exhaustive (and ex...

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State of the independent music economy
Fragmentation and consolidation

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

31 Oct 2024

Business Strategy independent label market shares Independent label market shares by region

This report presents the results of MIDiA’s annual independent label and distributor survey, as well as the most comprehensive market sizing of the non-major label sector ever conducted. Built on revenue data for 5,500 companies, we present the definitive view of the independent music economy, with market sizing, regional trends, the companies to...

MIDiA independent label and distributor survey

Mark Mulligan

14 Mar 2024

Independent labels market shares Record labels

MIDiA is fielding its annual independent label and distributor survey . This is the chance for the independent sector to have its voice heard. Given all of the changes that are taking place in the streaming economy, there has perhaps never been a more important time for this.

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Independent label survey
Playing the volume game

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

16 Jan 2024

Audience Insight

This report presents data from the 2023 MIDiA Research Independent Record Label survey The survey was fielded across three months in H1 2023, closing in May2023, with a sample size of 142 Topics covered in the survey include revenue by source, concerns...

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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...

Independent labels and distributors: take our survey!

Mark Mulligan

13 Feb 2023

Independent labels independent record labels Independent label survey

Measuring the actual contribution of the independent sector to the global recorded music market is an important but difficult task. The traditional way of thinking about independent market share is to take the total market and remove the majors’ revenues from that.

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Music creators and independent labels – have your voice heard!

Mark Mulligan

23 Feb 2023

Music Business Strategy

MIDiA is currently fielding two separate surveys that will help us create the definitive view of the contribution from music creators and independent labels to the global music market. We are exploring what it means to be a label and a creator in today’s fast-changing and challenge-strewn music bu...

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What ChatGPT can do for independent music

Tatiana Cirisano

21 Dec 2022

music industry independent music Independent artists

Everyone is talking about ChatGPT , the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that could potentially change the music industry. While the conversation has mainly focused on how ChatGPT can help with music creation, it is worth considering how it could also assist early-stage artists with marketing an...

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The industry’s narrative is not always the same as the artist's narrative: Redefining success for independent artists

Keith Jopling

6 Mar 2023

Streaming Creator economy Marketing

Last weekend, there was a fascinating quote from Maseo of hip hop legends De La Soul in the UK Guardian: “On our second album, we learned the importance of controlling the narrative. I learned early on that a hit record can hurt your entire body of work if you let the industry control your narrati...

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Music discovery is not dead, just evolving – the industry needs to evolve with it

Olivia Jones

9 May 2025

Audience Insight Music streaming Social media

Music streaming algorithms have changed the way we listen to music – for better and for worse. While the radio used to be the main way to find new music, streaming and social algorithms now drive discovery as listeners crave (and have come to expect) more personalised recommendations.

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A model for a new music streaming industry

Mark Mulligan

18 Mar 2025

Business Strategy Spotify YouTube

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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Global Recorded Music Revenues Reach $36.2 Billion in 2024 Amid Slower Growth

Tsion Tadesse

13 Mar 2025

Streaming Music Subscriptions

Non-major labels gain share for third consecutive year, as streaming revenue growth decelerates [London — Thursday, 13 March 2025] — Global recorded music revenues rose to $36.2 billion in 2024, marking a 6.

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Label services vendor landscape
Rise of the atomised label

Olivia Jones

13 May 2025

Innovation Labels Artists

The label services sector has emerged as a way for independent labels to provide artists with best-in-class tools without having to build those tools in-house. This shift towards atomised labels has created a new opportunity for label service vendors to establish a stronghold in the music industry.

Global recorded music revenues grew by 9.8% in 2023

Mark Mulligan

18 Mar 2024

recorded music 2023 recorded music revenues music revenues

Growth is back! After a slower 2022, global recorded music revenues grew by 9.8% in 2023 to reach $35.1 billion, compared to 7.1% in 2022, which means that the market is now more than double (124.5%) the size it was in 2015.

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International success for local language artists
A strategic playbook

Laura Fisher

24 Jun 2025

UK France Spotify

The music industry is undergoing a paradigm shift. Success once required artists to fit the traditional industry model where anglicisation and relocation to traditional hubs like Los Angeles, New York, or London were prerequisites. Streaming platforms have democratised access, enabling artists to achieve international fame while remaining culturall...

Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change

Hanna Kahlert

20 Mar 2024

women in music be the change Streaming

It has never been easier to become a music artist, but it has never been harder to turn that into a long-term career. A hyper-saturated content environment means record levels of competition and decreasing shares of stable revenues.

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DeepSeek and Rednote signal the dawning era of APAC

Hanna Kahlert

29 Jan 2025

Business Strategy Netflix TikTok

The AI race is a tense one. Billions of dollars have been poured into the likes of OpenAI. Meanwhile, the US and UK governments, among others, have pledged to invest heavily in AI development, suggesting that they feel it is of critical importance to “win” the new space race.

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One stream’s trash, another stream’s treasure – if everything’s niche, what success can you measure?

Hanna Kahlert

24 Jan 2024

Streaming Spotify remuneration

At this point, we are all on the same page, or at least should be, that ‘niche is the new mainstream’. Thanks to the (sometimes brutal) accuracy of social algorithms, pretty much any artist can find their ideal fans, no matter where they are in the world.

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