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Mark Mulligan

Mark Mulligan is a Music Analyst and Founder at MIDiA Research. He is a long-term tech analyst and a leading digital thinker with more than 20 years of experience, working with leading global music, entertainment, and tech companies. At MIDiA, Mark focuses on the streaming and creator economies, as well as music business trends and market metrics such as forecasts and market shares.

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Game Pass’ updates mark a new era for Xbox

Rhys Elliott

19 Jul 2024

Xbox Microsoft Games

Xbox recently announced significant changes to its subscription offering ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 hitting the service. In September 2024, Xbox is: Increasing prices for Game Pass Ultimate from $16.

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Podcasting has finally become profitable, but question marks remain

Rutger Rosenborg

5 Mar 2025

Product Strategy Spotify YouTube

Throughout 2023 and into 2024, you might have thought the sky was falling for podcasting. Layoffs and show cancellations had many in the industry wondering if there would be any financial future for the format.

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Musk calls UK government ‘tyrannical’ and TikTok could leave the US: is global culture going regional again?

Hanna Kahlert

7 Jan 2025

social media, tiktok ban elon musk

A swath of elections in 2024 have paved the way for regulatory changes in the social media sphere, with talk of bans and restrictions meeting the governmental meddling of CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

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A regulation-heavy year for social looms in 2025

Hanna Kahlert

17 Dec 2024

Social media Social Product Strategy

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has published guidelines around the Online Safety Act, warning that most social platforms are not adequately meeting standards. Sites that fail to comply can be faced with high fines and potential bans (per The Guardian ).

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Suno, Alexa, and the rise of ‘create to consume’

Ben Woods

21 Mar 2025

Alexa suno Creator economy

This blog was created with collaborative inputs from Ben Woods, Mark Mulligan , Tatiana Cirisano , and Kriss Thakrar . It is hard to think about generative AI without coming back to copyright. There is a pressing need to find IP safeguards before even more copyrighted content is used to train AI mo...

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Global music industry enters new phase of recalibration, says MIDiA

Tsion Tadesse

1 Jul 2025

Streaming Subscriptions Video

1st July 2025, London - The global music industry is navigating a crucial period of recalibration, as outlined in MIDiA Research’s recently published report “Global Music Forecasts 2025-2032.” This comprehensive report is an in-depth analysis of a market experiencing changing growth patterns, ...

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Why X marks the spot for ITV

Tim Mulligan

14 Dec 2022

ITVX Video Business Strategy

On December 8th, the UK’s largest ad-supported TV broadcaster launched ITVX . The service is built on ITV’s pre-existing catch-up and subscription video on demand (SVOD) service ITV Hub and ITV Hub+.

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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.

AI music creators: music’s superfans

Mark Mulligan

13 Nov 2025

Audience Insight Fandom Creators

Not a week seems to go by without some big news in the world of music AI. Hot on the heels of UMG’s Udio deal , GEMA just secured a favourable ruling against OpenAI (via Reuters ). Over the course of the year, however, court rulings have fallen roughly evenly for media companies and AI companies, ...

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The future of music streaming: Change or be changed

Mark Mulligan

13 Oct 2025

Business Strategy Music streaming Fandom

The music business, entertainment as a whole – even the world – are at turning points. The future may be unknown, but there is always one certainty: things are going to be different. The change that got us here was paradoxically both fast and slow.

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Global recorded music revenues up 5.9% in H1 2025

Mark Mulligan

29 Sep 2025

Marketing Strategy Streaming Music

MIDiA is excited to announce our first ever mid-year recorded music model. Clients can access the data here , which is published as part of our H1 2025 music industry metrics report, containing more than 40 pages of market metrics, company financials, and consumer data.

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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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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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The unflattening of streaming

Mark Mulligan

21 Aug 2025

Business Strategy Streaming Fandom

This post builds on our January 2025 post ‘The unflattening of music’ which itself built on two previous pieces (you can find links to both in that post). Industries arrive at pivot points when an accumulation of fissures coalesce into one big crack.

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MIDiA Research 2025-2032 global music forecasts | Recalibration

Mark Mulligan

1 Jul 2025

Business Strategy Music Recorded music

We are pleased to announce the release of MIDiA’s annual music forecasts report. This is always a labour of love and takes a bit longer than some other entities’ forecasts as our approach is more Etsy than Amazon, with every single line of data (and there are thousands of them) being hand crafte...

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Streaming is both retail and radio – it shouldn’t be

Mark Mulligan

26 Jun 2025

Business Strategy Streaming Fandom

In a brutally simplified view of the past, the recorded music industry had two lanes: retail and radio. Piracy killed retail. Streaming killed piracy, then went on to, if not kill, then seriously maim radio.

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MIDiA Music Creator Survey 2025

Mark Mulligan

16 Jun 2025

Audience Insight Music Music creators

It is that time of the year again: the annual MIDiA Music Creator Survey is here. Every year, we field this survey to take the pulse of music creators globally, diving into topics such as career aspirations, services and tools used, challenges and hurdles faced, and much more.

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AI futures: Culture wars

Mark Mulligan

4 Jun 2025

Business Strategy AI Creator workflows

AI is transforming culture, entertainment, business, and society at a pace unprecedented in the digital era. Unlike previous tech, AI is evolving at the speed of computing, not the speed of the human brain.

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The new soft power and its hidden rules

Mark Mulligan

15 May 2025

Business Strategy Entertainment Social

Throughout the 20th century, particularly the second half, many Western countries – such as the US, UK, and France – increased their global influence through the use of cultural soft power. This was done through tools like Voice of America and the BBC World Service, as well as via movies, TV, jo...

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Unintended consequences – the year ahead for streaming

Mark Mulligan

8 May 2025

Business Strategy Streaming Subscriptions

Streaming may be maturing from a revenue perspective but with two-tier (‘artist centric’) licensing and supremium, 2025 is set to be a year of transformative change in both product and business terms.

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