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.

We’re Hiring: Business Development Manager

Mark Mulligan

11 Nov 2019

midia midia is hiring midia job vacancy

MIDiA is hiring for a new position: a Business Development Manager focused on the TV/video space. Over the last year we have been fast building our capabilities and profile in the TV and video space, including delivering the opening keynote at Mipcom and launching our next ge...

Cover image for We’re Hiring: Business Development Manager

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) November 11th 2019

Mark Mulligan

11 Nov 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

BTS, fandom 3.0: The management of BTS’s distributor was trying to work out who had green-lit an unauthorized billboard campaign for the South Korean boy band . When it turned out that the fans had paid, it pulled back the veil on a whole new fandom paradigm.

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) November 11th 2019

Why music streaming needs a Disney+

Mark Mulligan

5 Nov 2019

Disney Innovation Streaming video

The music and video streaming markets have long been best understood by their differences rather than similarities, but the flurry of video subscription announcements in recent months have upped the ante even further.

Cover image for Why music streaming needs a Disney+

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) November 4th 2019

Mark Mulligan

4 Nov 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

Music manager shift: A new ‘Managing Expectations’ report from the MMF indicates the role of music managers is transforming. Headline: music managers are doing an ever wider and more complex range of tasks.

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) November 4th 2019

Spotify podcasts Q3 2019: Solid start

Mark Mulligan

29 Oct 2019

Media podcast market Podcasts

Word count is always a useful guide for how important something is to a company’s ambitions. It is therefore no small detail that Spotify’s Q3 2019 earnings release mentioned the word ‘podcast’ thirteen times.

Cover image for Spotify podcasts Q3 2019: Solid start

Cover image for Recession Impact

Recession Impact
How an Economic Downturn Could Reshape Digital Media

Alistair Taylor, Amanda Stears, Karol Severin, Keith Jopling, Mark Mulligan, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller

29 Oct 2019

Apple Spotify Amazon

Ten years on from the credit crunch, the global economy could be poised to enter another economic recession. Many of the underlying causes of the credit crunch remain in place, due to governments lacking the appetite for the structural reform required to right the faults in the global financial system that catalysed the slowdown.

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) October 28th 2019

Mark Mulligan

28 Oct 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

SiriusXM, podcast marvel: SiriusXM has struck a multiyear deal with Marvel to create exclusive podcasts , illustrating that traditional radio companies still have the potential to be the major players in podcasts.

Cover image for Smart Speakers and Headphone Market Shares

Smart Speakers and Headphone Market Shares
Expanding Streaming’s Addressable Base

Mark Mulligan

25 Oct 2019

Apple Beats Spotify

The rise of digital pushed music out of the home stereo and into the earbud. Over recent years this has created a booming market for headphones, but speakers are fighting back – driven in large part by tech majors using smart speakers as a Trojan horse for expanding into the home.

How music publishers are driving a full stack revolution

Mark Mulligan

14 Oct 2019

full stack music Music publishing Music

Music publishing catalogues are gaining momentum fast as an asset class for institutional investments, with transactions ranging from large catalogue mergers and acquisitions (M&A) through to investment vehicles for songwriters’ shares such as the Hipgnosis Fund and Royalty Exchange.

Cover image for How music publishers are driving a full stack revolution

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) October 14th 2019

Mark Mulligan

14 Oct 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

Fortnite black hole: In what may be the most audacious global games marketing stunt ever, Epic Games killed off Fortnite in Sunday’s end-of-season event , which one million people viewed live on Twitch.

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) October 14th 2019

Cover image for Music Publishing

Music Publishing
A Full-Stack Revolution

Mark Mulligan

9 Oct 2019

Spotify Music publishing Pandora

Tencent’s bid for 10% of Universal Music Group has set a new high-water mark for what risks becoming an overheated music rights mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sector. However, investment appetite remains strong and catalogue supply constrained, so there will be plenty more activity before the inevitable contraction.

Abbey Road 50 years on: The two worlds of music listening

Mark Mulligan

7 Oct 2019

abbey road midia index niche is the new mainstream

Half a century after it first after it first topped the charts, The Beatles’ Abbey Road is back at the summit of the UK charts (per the BBC ).With the anniversary editions of the album retailing for between $20 and $100, the impact on Universal Music’s revenue will be even more pronounced than t...

Cover image for Abbey Road 50 years on: The two worlds of music listening

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) October 7th 2019

Mark Mulligan

7 Oct 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

Streaming pricing, emerging questions: Music Business Worldwide raised the question of why streaming is discounted in emerging markets when BMWs and Amazon Echoes are not. There are many layers to this, but the key one is – who is going to pay? High income urban elites can afford Western prices; t...

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) October 7th 2019

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) September 27th 2019

Mark Mulligan

30 Sep 2019

Take Five Cultural trends

Music licensing hubs: Monokrome launched its Rights Hub, contractual rights and file management platform for rightsholders, while Soundfeed put its label sub-licensing platform into open beta .Fragmented fandom sees streams more widely shared among middle class artists which means more small rightsh...

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) September 27th 2019

Cover image for Consumer Ad Receptiveness

Consumer Ad Receptiveness
Apathy, Evasion and Engagement

Mark Mulligan

30 Sep 2019

Spotify Marketing Amazon

On-demand audiences expect to be able to control their digital experiences, and many have opted for the ad-free oases of streaming subscriptions. While traditional media might be losing audience share it is not giving up the fight, instead investing heavily in ad tech that improves targeting and advertiser agility.

Have we reached peak tech?

Mark Mulligan

27 Sep 2019

investment tech tech investments

In last week’s Take Five I highlighted a Vox story which reported that over the last year the number of companies using terms like ‘tech’ or technology’ in their documents is down 12%.This is an early indicator of a much more fundamental concept – we may have already reached peak in the te...

Cover image for Have we reached peak tech?

Cover image for Music Consumer Behaviour Q2 2019

Music Consumer Behaviour Q2 2019
Fragmentation and Disruption

Mark Mulligan

26 Sep 2019

Music consumers iTunes store Spotify

This report presents key trends and analysis from MIDiA’s quarterly Music Brand Tracker survey, including places of listening, streaming music activities, radio, demographics, streaming app users, time spent listening and top streamed artists. Companies...

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) September 22nd 2019

Mark Mulligan

22 Sep 2019

Take Five Cultural trends

Amazon, hi-def bet: Amazon has launched its long-slated Amazon Music HD service, delivering lossless FLAC files to a new HD streaming tier. Amazon is betting on its older, higher-income user base to care more about quality than Spotify users.

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) September 22nd 2019

The future of music: A vision of post-format

Mark Mulligan

18 Sep 2019

Music music industry Recorded music

Formats have shaped and dictated the evolution of recorded music. The constraints that formats set have, in turn, become the creative frameworks within which music has operated. Now, in the internet era, formats are becoming a thing of the past – and yet the way in which music is made and distribu...

Cover image for The future of music: A vision of post-format

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) – September 16th 2019

Mark Mulligan

16 Sep 2019

Take Five Business Strategy

Spotify – small step, big step: Spotify has announced that it is acquiring musician marketplace company Soundbetter.Back in July, Spotify halted its artist direct offering. Some quarters viewed that as the end of Spotify’s disruptive label-competitor strategy.

Cover image for Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) – September 16th 2019

© 2025 MIDiA Research Ltd. All Rights Reserved.