Mark Mulligan

MIDiA Research Artist Survey Q2 2020

Report by Mark Mulligan and Keith Jopling

18 Sep 2020

This deck presents findings from MIDiA's Q2 2020 survey of music artists, assessing the impact on their careers in the wake of the coronavirus. It consists of 13 charts/graphs/table slides. The full…

Music Subscriber Market Shares 4.0
Subscriptions Decouple from Revenue

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Report by Mark Mulligan

18 Sep 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: This report presents key figures from MIDiA’s global music subscriber market shares model. The full dataset is published alongside this report with quarterly data from Q4 2015…

Why Kanye West is the modern-day Prince

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

18 Sep 2020

Not ‘prince’ in the Machiavellian sense of the term – though there is an argument for that too – but as in the artist formerly known as. Back in 1992, Prince fought his label Warner Bros to…

Quick Take: Apple One – Recession Buster

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

15 Sep 2020

Apple officially announced its long anticipated all-in-one content bundle: Apple One. $14.95 gets you Apple Music, Arcade, Apple TV+ and 50GB of iCloud storage. A family plan retails at $19.95 and a premier…

Why the struggle of small venues will affect the entire music industry

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

11 Sep 2020

Prior to the dislocation caused by the pandemic, live music operated with a structure that gave artists a clear sense of where they were in their careers and where they could aim for next. Small clubs…

Take part in MIDiA’s electronic music producer survey!

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

10 Sep 2020

MIDiA is currently fielding a survey aimed at electronic music producers. It takes about ten minutes to complete and there is a $/€/£50 voucher for every tenth participant. We will also send you a synopsis…

Post-Pandemic Programming
Surviving and Thriving in the Recession

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Report by Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan, Karol Severin, Alistair Taylor, Keith Jopling and Hanna Kahlert

9 Sep 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: COVID-19 caused dislocation and disruption to the global entertainment business. Now, the recession and the prospect of further pandemic peaks have created an unprecedented outlook…

Where did Disney and Live Nation’s missing $10 billion go?

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

4 Sep 2020

In both economic and pandemic terms, we are in a relatively quiet period compared to the first half of the year. COVID-19 is at much lower levels in most countries and there are multiple sectors, such…

Who will own the virtual concert space?

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

28 Aug 2020

2020 will go down as a rough year for many artists, largely because of the income they lost when live ground to a halt. Unfortunately, the live music sector is still going to be disrupted in 2021 and it…

Music Discovery
Streaming’s Growing Role

Report by Mark Mulligan

24 Aug 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: Radio has long led music discovery and continues to do so today. However, streaming – both audio and video – are making up ground fast, especially among more engaged and younger…

Music Marketing
The Velocity Game

Report by Mark Mulligan

24 Aug 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: Music streaming has become so central to the functioning of the record label business model that labels are becoming beholden to streaming service optimisation. A shift towards…

Spotify Q2 2020 Earnings
In the Shadow of COVID

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Report by Mark Mulligan

18 Aug 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: Spotify’s share price grew strongly in June 2020, with the markets responding positively to its podcast investments. However, while that increase was sustained throughout July,…

What AWAL’s $100k artists mean for the streaming economy

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

14 Aug 2020

Kobalt’s AWAL division announced that ‘hundreds of its artists have reached [the] annual streaming revenue threshold [of $100,000]’ . Make no mistake, this is major milestone for a record label…

Apple to launch subscription bundle – we called it!

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

13 Aug 2020

In MIDiA’s 2020 Predictions report published in December 2019 we predicted that tech majors would start creating subscription bundles, with Apple leading the fray. Lo and behold, news has just come…

Streaming’s remuneration model cannot be ‘fixed’

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

12 Aug 2020

The #brokenrecord debate continues to build momentum and new models such as user-centric are getting increased attention, including at governmental level in the UK. But as Mat Dryhurst correctly observes…

Newsflash: UMG, WMG and Spotify may have a problem with Tencent

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

7 Aug 2020

UPDATE: A White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the announcement, at this stage, will not affect Tencent shareholdings of companies and clarified that the order only refers to transactions…

The MIDiA Research Podcast: Episode 1 – What Next for Tencent?

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

7 Aug 2020

We are excited to announce the first episode of the MIDiA Research podcast: What Next for Tencent? President Trump's executive orders concerning Bytedance and Tencent set the cat among the pigeons. In…

COVID-19 hit major labels much harder than it did Spotify

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

5 Aug 2020

COVID-19 was always going to have a significant impact on the music business, and with the Q2 results for all of the major music companies now in we can start to look at just how big that impact has been…

We are at a turning point for social music

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

4 Aug 2020

In recent days we have seen three major developments that, collectively, are a potential pivot point for social music: 1. TikTok close to a US-entity buyout by Microsoft to avoid potential…

Attention Economy
Media Consumption Q2 2020

Report by Mark Mulligan

31 Jul 2020

The 20,000 Foot View: This report presents MIDiA’s Q2 2020 media consumption data, exploring time and money spent by consumers during the quarter. As such, it presents a snapshot of consumer behaviour…