Mark is MIDiA’s founder and part of the music analyst team. He covers everything from market shares, to forecasts, to business models and product strategy across the music value chain.

Spotify Q2 2019 Earnings
Mature Markets Still the Engine Room of Growth

Mark Mulligan

August 2019

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q2 2019 was another solid quarter for Spotify, adding the same number of subscribers it typically does in promotional quarters. Core metrics such as churn and average revenue per user (ARPU) all moved...

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Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) August 23rd 2019

Mark Mulligan

23 Aug 2019

Apple TV

Games

google chrome

Taylor Swift, pre-sale love:  Taylor Swift tends not to adhere to prevailing industry trends. As a millennial artist with a strong Gen Z following, streaming should rightly be the core of her recordings...

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Why Spotify and Netflix Need to Worry About a Global Recession

Mark Mulligan

23 Aug 2019

economic downturn

entertainment spend

global recession

A growing body of economists is becoming increasingly convinced that a global recession is edging closer. The last time we experienced a global economic downturn was the 2008 credit crunch. Although the...

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Take Five (The Big Five Stories and Data You Need To Know)

Mark Mulligan

19 Aug 2019

Spotify, price hike:  Pricing is streaming’s big problem. With premium revenue growth set to slow and ARPU declining due to family plans, discounts, bundles etc., the business needs another way...

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Take Five (The Big Five Stories and Data You Need to Know)

Mark Mulligan

12 Aug 2019

Data Point Of The Day

take 5

Games

Apple ups its artist analytics but do artists care? Kobalt and Spotify both helped reshape the music industry’s understanding of what role data should play and how it should be presented. Apple announced...

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Backing Both Horses: The Thinking Behind Tencent’s UMG Stake

Mark Mulligan

6 Aug 2019

bytedance

i-mode

Tencent

As long expected, Tencent is poised to take a stake in Vivendi, reported to be 10%. While the news might not be surprising, there are a number of important factors at play: Tencent fast-tracked? Given...

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Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) August 5th 2019

Mark Mulligan

5 Aug 2019

cricket

ECB

Facebook

Spotify - steady sailing, for now:  Spotify hit 108 million subscribers in Q2 2019  – which is exactly what we predicted. Spotify continues to grow in line with the wider market, maintaining...

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State of the Streaming Nation 3.0: Multi-Paced Growth

Mark Mulligan

30 Jul 2019

Regular followers of MIDiA will know that one of our flagship releases is our State of the Streaming Nation report. Now into its third year, this report is the definitive assessment of the streaming music...

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The Frank Ocean Days May Be Gone, but Streaming Disintermediation Is Just Getting Going

Mark Mulligan

24 Jul 2019

Marketing

Music

Music Business Worldwide recently ran a story highlighting that both Spotify and Apple Music were backing independent artist (i.e. independent of record label rather than an indie label artist) Aaron Smith,...

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State of the Podcast Nation

Mark Mulligan

July 2019

Apple

Spotify

Radio

Podcasts are an overnight success many years in the making. Podcasts were first added to Apple’s iTunes ecosystem in 2005, only to then spend a long time in the shadows. Now, however, they occupy the...

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Artist Fandom
The Artist Marketing Playbook Needs Rewriting

Mark Mulligan

July 2019

Spotify

artists

taylor swift

The whole essence of fandom is being turned upside down. An emerging crop of streaming native artists is finding its audience in a much more targeted and efficient way than via traditional music marketing....

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New MIDiA Artist Survey – Take Part!

Mark Mulligan

16 Jul 2019

Artist survey

DIY artists

independent artists

Firstly, thanks to all of you who took part in our artist survey last year. If you did so, you should by now have received the link to the free report. If not, email us at info@midiaresearch and we’ll...

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Independent Artists
The Music Industry Rewritten

Mark Mulligan

July 2019

creators

labels

rhapsody

The rise of independent artists is one of the most important changes to happen to the modern recorded music business. While traditional label models still dominate, ever more artists are pursuing non-traditional...

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Independent Artists: The Age of Empowerment

Mark Mulligan

11 Jul 2019

Amuse

artist careers

Artist survey

MIDiA is proud to announce an exclusive new report in conjunction with Amuse – Independent Artists: The Age of Empowerment . The report is based on a global survey of independent artists that we conducted...

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Free-to-Attend Event: Monetising Fandom

Mark Mulligan

10 Jul 2019

artist brands

artist data

audience data

Join us on Wednesday 17 th July in central London for MIDiA’s next free-to-attend event: Monetising Fandom in a Fragmented Content Landscape. Regular attendees of our events will know that they combine...

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The Artist Marketing Playbook Needs Rewriting

Mark Mulligan

5 Jul 2019

artist marketing

artist streams

artists

The whole essence of fandom is being turned upside down. An emerging crop of streaming-native artists is finding its audience in a much more targeted and efficient way than via the traditional music marketing....

min read

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Big Machine (Inadvertently) Just Did a Promo Ad for Label Services Deals

Mark Mulligan

1 Jul 2019

Amuse

awakl

Bandcamp

The sales of Taylor Swift’s former label Big Machine Records to Scooter Braun has resulted in an ugly spat that has been played out very publicly. First Braun enthused about acquiring a ‘brilliant’...

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State of the Music Publishing Nation

Mark Mulligan and Zach Fuller

June 2019

Spotify

Spotify

Kobalt

This report, a first from MIDiA dedicated to the music publishing space, addresses the most important trends in the industry. With 2018 seeing revenues continue their accelerated growth and music publishing...

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Independent Artists
The Age of Empowerment

Keith Jopling and Mark Mulligan

June 2019

Free Report

Key takeaways A sector with real scale. Artists without record labels generated $643.1 million in 2018, up 35% from 2017. These independent artists represent the fastest-growing segment of the global recorded...

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Spotify Takes Aim at Radio, Again

Mark Mulligan

13 Jun 2019

ad revenue

ad supported streaming

ad supported streaming audio

Spotify has launched a radio-like feature set for premium subscribers in the US called  Your Daily Drive. Although it is only positioned as a playlist, the content mix includes podcast news content...

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