Mark Mulligan

Mark Mulligan is a music analyst and the 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.

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

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

27 Mar 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

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

13 Mar 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

26 Feb 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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AI is reshaping the music creator economy, and that change will reshape the music business

Mark Mulligan

3 Feb 2025

Business Strategy Music Creator economy

MIDiA is pleased to announce the release of not one but two new music creator economy reports. These are our latest " State of the music creator economy "and " Music creator tools forecasts "reports. These annual deliverables have quickly become industry benchmarks, and if you operate in the music c...

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The unflattening of music

Mark Mulligan

30 Jan 2025

Cultural trends Spotify TikTok

[This post builds on two other recent MIDiA posts: Background music and What got you here ] At the half way point of the decade it is a good time to reflect on how the business of music is reshaping the culture of music – and where this is heading.

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MIDiA Research 2025–2031 music creator tools forecasts
AI comes to town

Mark Mulligan

28 Jan 2025

subscribers AI Business Strategy

This music creator tools forecasts report acts as a companion piece to MIDiA’s report “State of music creator economy: AI’s growing reach ” . This report provides analysis, market sizing, and forecasts for users and revenues for music creator tools revenues across the following categories: Software and services DAWs Music software (plug-ins...

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State of the music creator economy
AI’s growing reach

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

21 Jan 2025

Innovation Creators revenue

Still recovering from post-pandemic aftershocks, the music creator economy now faces unprecedented disruption from generative AI. More people are creating than ever before (both as creators and consumers) and sounds, services, and software revenue is growing well (the latter boosted by generative AI).

What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Mark Mulligan

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy Spotify Streaming

Since its inception, Spotify has been, and continues to be, the streaming music market’s lightning rod. This is due to its continued ability to maintain leading market share and the fact it is the only leading global DSP that is independent and therefore has to focus place more focus on commercial...

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Anti-algorithm, anti-perfection - the rise of a music counter-culture

Mark Mulligan

20 Dec 2024

SoundCloud Scenes Music

Today’s music landscape is one defined by abundance and immediacy. In today’s chronically-online world, everything is over-ground, immediately. Scenes have to work really hard to be underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or marketing person is going to see the buzz and try to bottle its ...

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Q3 2024 music metrics
Maturation effect

Mark Mulligan

18 Dec 2024

Business Strategy

This report presents MIDiA consumer data for key music consumer behaviours and company financials for Q3 2024.Consumer data covered includes, streaming app usage, music behaviour and streaming activities. Company financials covers record labels, music publishers, DSPs, and live music companies.

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MIDiA's 2025 predictions webinar slides
It's social's stage now

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin, Hanna Kahlert, Tatiana Cirisano, Ben Woods, Rutger Rosenborg, Rhys Elliott and Olivia Jones

6 Dec 2024

Free Report

Spotify YouTube Twitch

MIDiA's expert analysts dive into our 2025 predictions for the music, social, video, audio, and games industries – and explain why we believe "it's social's stage now".

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MIDiA’s 2025 predictions
It’s social’s stage now

Mark Mulligan, Karol Severin, Hanna Kahlert, Tatiana Cirisano, Ben Woods, Rutger Rosenborg, Rhys Elliott and Olivia Jones

5 Dec 2024

Apple Spotify YouTube

The creator economy reshaped entertainment in the first half of the 2020s and social wasthe big winner, now positioned at the centre of the entertainment economy. In 2025 wewill see the second-order effects begin to play out, set against the backdrop of attentionsaturation, content commodification, and increased focus on profit.

It’s social’s stage now: MIDiA’s 2025 predictions webinar

Mark Mulligan

28 Nov 2024

predictions 2025 predictions tech trends

One of my favourite parts of the MIDiA year is creating the MIDiA predictions report and webinar. It is always a true team effort, with our team of analysts spending weeks brainstorming ideas, proposing predictions, stress testing those to within an inch of their lives, and then writing the report.

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Hold or twist? The music industry’s innovation dilemma

Mark Mulligan

20 Nov 2024

Innovation Streaming streaming growth

As Clayton Christensen identified in The Innovator’s Dilemma, there are two types of innovation: sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. Sustaining innovation is what companies do to enhance existing business models, while disruptive innovation is typically driven by new entrants – insu...

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State of the independent music economy
Fragmentation and consolidation

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

31 Oct 2024

Business Strategy independent label market shares Independent label market shares by region

This report presents the results of MIDiA’s annual independent label and distributor survey, as well as the most comprehensive market sizing of the non-major label sector ever conducted. Built on revenue data for 5,500 companies, we present the definitive view of the independent music economy, with market sizing, regional trends, the companies to...

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