Mark Mulligan | MIDiA Research

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

Mark Mulligan

26 Jun 2025

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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AI futures
Culture wars

Ben Woods, Tatiana Cirisano, Hanna Kahlert, Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

May 2025

Apple

Spotify

Deezer

AI is transforming culture, entertainment, business, and society at a rate unprecedented in the digital era. Unlike previous tech, AI is evolving at the speed of computing, not the human brain. Delivering as quickly as it promises, AI is breaking the mould.

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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Are we reaching peak fandom?

Mark Mulligan

1 May 2025

Business Strategy

Streaming

Music

With streaming revenue growth slowing to 6.2% in 2024, the recorded music industry’s attention is firmly fixed on superfans as the ‘get out of jail free’ card. The growing sophistication of artist merch has reached the stage where fans can buy Taylor Swift fashion bags and shop her jewelry ran...

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Germany media consumption Q4 2024
Growth potential on all fronts

Cover image for Germany media consumption Q4 2024

Mark Mulligan

April 2025

US

UK

France

This report presents MIDiA consumer entertainment data across media, music, audio, and games. Data covered includes streaming music, podcasts, social media, games consoles, and much more. All data is from our Q4 2024 survey, fielded in US, Canada, Brazil,...

IMS Business Report 2025

Mark Mulligan

23 Apr 2025

Spotify

YouTube

Facebook

Today I presented the 11th edition of the IMS Business Report at the ever-brilliant annual electronic music industry conference in Ibiza. And who doesn’t like a conference in Ibiza?! The full report is available via the IMS website.

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Cultural movements
A new take on mainstream for the fragmentation era

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

April 2025

Entertainment

mainstream

Cultural trends

Entertainment has become nichified, mainstream has become smaller, and audiences have fragmented. While this has been crucial to the rise of the long tail and the creator economy, there is a need for a new, fragmentation-era successor to mainstream. Building upon MIDiA’s work on scenes, in this report we make the case for cultural movements, the ...

How Charli XCX leveraged the hyperpop scene into a global movement

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

April 2025

Labels

Streaming

US

Read the case study …

Welcome to the brand new MIDiA

Mark Mulligan

2 Apr 2025

Business Strategy

music industry

Social

Today we are proud to announce the next iteration of MIDiA Research. 2024 marked MIDiA’s tenth year, and in the preceding decade we broke brave new ground for entertainment business analysis. We introduced market shaping concepts such as fragmentation, scenes, peak attention, the tyranny of choice...

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Music subscriber market shares 2024: Slowdown? What slowdown?

Mark Mulligan

27 Mar 2025

Business Strategy

Spotify

YouTube

Record label streaming revenue growth slowed to 6% in 2024 but there was no such slowdown in subscriber growth. In our just published ‘ Music subscriber market shares Q4 2024 ’ report, we reveal that the 85 million net* new subscribers added in 2024 was only two million less than in 2023, result...

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Music subscriber market shares Q4 2024
Full stream ahead

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares Q4 2024

Mark Mulligan, Tatiana Cirisano, Mark Qi, Olivia Jones and Laura Fisher

March 2025

music subscriber market shares

Business Strategy

Streaming market metrics are bifurcating. Label streaming revenues were up in 2024, indicating a much anticipated slow down in revenue growth. Yet, at the same time, music subscriber growth was nearly double that of label streaming revenues for 2024. As is so often the case, there are many factors at play.

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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Recorded music market 2024: $36.2 billion, up 6.5%

Mark Mulligan

13 Mar 2025

Music

Recorded music

Business Strategy

MIDiA has just released its annual recorded music market shares report. Clients can access the full report and the accompanying massive (!) data set here . For the rest of you, here are some highlights from the report.

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Recorded music market shares 2024
Widening gaps

Cover image for Recorded music market shares 2024

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

March 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.

Music streaming consumer profile Q4 2024
Stabilisation and fandom slowdown

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

February 2025

Willingness to pay

Music consumers

Streaming

Consumer music behaviours are both stabilising and showing signs of coming change. Change that could be challenging for all music business stakeholders, especially with regards to fandom monetisation. This report presents data-focused visuals and impactful analysis of trends and anomalies that will inform your understanding of what is happening to ...

Craft versus character: the equation the music industry needs to fix

Mark Mulligan

18 Feb 2025

Fandom

TikTok

Streaming

I recently wrote about the unflattening of music :how creativity, craft, and fandom can – if done right – counter the growing commodification of music. Not surprisingly, I focused on the music side of the equation, but in doing so I missed the other big flattening challenge music faces.

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Why Spotify only hit profitability now (but will do so again)

Mark Mulligan

13 Feb 2025

Business Strategy

Spotify

Streaming

Spotify finally registered its first profitable year in 2024. It has hit net profit in individual quarters before – most recently in Q3 2023 – but this is the first year it was profitable throughout the year.

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