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Songwriters

Understanding the evolving needs and challenges of songwriters

https://www.midiaresearch.com/songwriters

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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.

The ‘pure’ songwriter is disappearing – and it’s everyone’s problem

Tatiana Cirisano

19 Jun 2025

Music songwriters music industry

The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) annual meeting is known for making headlines. At last year’s event, CEO David Israelite used his state-of-the-union speech to announce a formal complaint against Spotify’s audiobook bundling, lodged with the Federal Trade Commission.

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The rise of the songwriter ‘brand’

Tatiana Cirisano

23 Jul 2024

songwriters Music publishing Social media

If you have been drawn into the particular orbit of pop music that includes Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter, you probably know a thing or two about Dan Nigro. Fans have been joining the dots between Nigro and this cluster of emergent pop artists on social media — not only disc...

MIDiA Research Opens Second Global Songwriter Survey to Tackle Industry Challenges

Tsion Tadesse

18 Mar 2025

Streaming Music US

[LONDON, March 18, 2025 ] — MIDiA Research has launched a new global survey aimed at uncovering the real-world experiences, income challenges, and career needs of songwriters — the creative forces behind today’s music industry.

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Songwriters take the stage
A new playbook for a new era

Tatiana Cirisano and Fernanda Balzaretti

31 Jul 2024

Streaming Spotify music industry

The streaming era upended the already-fraught business of being a songwriter, pushing songwriters to secure new revenue streams and better deal terms. While the recorded music industry has responded to similar shifts with a flourishing artist services market, the same is not true for songwriters.

MIDiA Research Presents Results from First-Ever Songwriter Survey

Tsion Tadesse

31 Jul 2024

709 Music

67% of songwriters name “lack of meaningful streaming income” as their biggest challenge, and it remains the top obstacle regardless of income level and career stage, according to the latest study by MIDiA Research LONDON, 31 July 2024 – Songwriters, although often referred to as the backbone...

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Platoon just quietly raised the bar for songwriter services

Tatiana Cirisano

11 Jul 2024

songwriting Music Business Strategy

Over the past few months, singer-songwriter RAYE has been using her spotlight to campaign for fairer pay for songwriters — advocating for them to receive royalty points on master recordings, per diems for studio time, and more.

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The songwriter’s role is shifting: here’s what the data shows

Tsion Tadesse

10 Jul 2025

Streaming Instagram Subscriptions

London, 10 July 2025 – The digital era has transformed every part of the music industry, but perhaps no role has been more quietly upended than that of the songwriter. Unlike recording artists, songwriters have long lacked the fallback revenue streams of touring or merchandise, while their share o...

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The music business is splitting in two. Here’s why songwriters are reinventing their role

Tatiana Cirisano

24 Jul 2025

Business Strategy music industry songwriters

When systems fail, there are two options: try to fix what is broken, or build something new. In our ’s landmark ‘bifurcation theory’ report , MIDiA pinpointed a new class of music creators taking the latter path.

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Songwriters, we want to hear from you! Raise your voice in MIDiA’s new survey

Tatiana Cirisano

27 Mar 2025

Audience Insight Artists songwriters

Last year, MIDiA’s inaugural songwriter survey uncovered an alarming statistic: 67% of songwriters name “lack of meaningful streaming income” as their biggest challenge. More alarming yet is the fact that this remained the most common challenge for songwriters in our survey across income level...

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Songwriters take the stage: a new playbook for a new era

Tatiana Cirisano

31 Jul 2024

songwriters songwriting income Music publishing

In the 2021 report, “ Rebalancing the song economy ”, MIDiA introduced the idea of songs as mini industries. In the streaming era, songs are constantly revived and reimagined — and so long as you own the publishing, it does not matter if the version that becomes popular is the original, a cove...

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Songwriters, we want to hear from you – take our survey!

Fernanda Balzaretti

13 May 2024

songwriters Music publishing pro

Songwriters are the backbone of the music industry; however, they are rarely in the spotlight. As with the rest of the industry, songwriters have seen their workflows and income sources turned upside down in the streaming and social media eras.

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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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Music publishing forecasts: strong growth and more to come

Mark Mulligan

15 Aug 2024

Music publishing songwriters publishing forecasts

Following hot on the heels of our future of songwriting report , MIDiA is pleased to announce the release of our latest music publishing forecasts report . Here are some highlights. Thus far, the 2020s have been a good decade for the music publishing industry.

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How the DNA of a hit changed in the last five years

Olivia Jones

14 Mar 2025

Cultural trends Music Music streaming

Key insights from this blog: The second installment of MIDiA's "DNA of a hit" blog series looks at how the hits on Billboard's Top 10 chart have changed in the last five years Key MIDiA data highlights the struggles for songwriters and the importance of YouTube for music consumption We predict that ...

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What is at stake in the TikTok-UMG showdown

Tatiana Cirisano

1 Feb 2024

Music streaming TikTok Universal Music Group

Music’s biggest on-again, off-again relationship just took a turn for the ugly, as Universal Music Group is pulling its music off TikTok. We have seen this movie before: Every time the music industry negotiates licenses with social platforms, the battle boils down to a question of who needs the ot...

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Background music is a short-term win for DSPs – but it could be a long-term problem

Olivia Jones

23 Jan 2025

Business Strategy Spotify Streaming

Note: Following the publication of this piece, Spotify released a statement regarding Pelly's article, which is reproduced in full at the bottom of this page. In this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine , Liz Pelly published “ The Ghosts in the Machine ”.

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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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Bundle up: Audible audiobooks join the Amazon Music catalogue

Rutger Rosenborg

4 Dec 2024

Spotify Amazon Amazon Music

As audio platforms continue to expand into industries beyond audio, new fronts in the platform wars are emerging. With Spotify now competing with YouTube for video, podcast, and music supremacy, the company’s foray into audiobooks has placed it in direct competition with Audible and, by extension,...

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The ghost of the 2000s lingers over the catalogue acquisition market

Kriss Thakrar

23 Jun 2025

Product Strategy investment music catalogue

Sign up here for MIDiA’s Masterclass webinar on catalogue investment, this Thursday June 26, 2025, with Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano. In the second quarter of 2025, a range of catalogue acquisition deals have broken the typical mould: Sony acquired Hipgnosis Songs Group from Recognition Musi...

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