Reports: Music creators

Browse all of our reports, featuring our analysts' expert insights and analysis of audience segmentation, emerging trends and technologies, value chains, market shares, predictions and more – backed by our proprietary survey data and bespoke models & forecasts. Become a subscriber to get new ones every month, or just pick one to get started.

Return to live
Post-pandemic music fans

Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

July 2023

Consumer Behaviour

live music

Music creators

Today’s live music audience skews 45+, with rock concerts and theatres / concert halls dominating sales. Fandom is by far the strongest factor in purchasing tickets, eclipsing price, and location. So,...

Music’s Instagram moment
The social music creation revolution

Cover image for Music’s Instagram moment

Tatiana Cirisano

March 2023

Consumer Behaviour

Apple

Spotify

Social media has steadily integrated music, and music creation tools have steadily become more social. These trends are converging, accelerated by shifts in consumer behaviour and artificial intelligence...

A field of all levels
Strategizing music’s attention economy

Tatiana Cirisano

November 2022

Consumer Behaviour

Music creators

record labels

Over roughly the past decade, each stage in the evolution of the attention economy accelerated the pace of fragmentation and oversaturation in music, unearthing new challenges for each micro-generation...

The future of music
The rise of a counterculture industry

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

June 2022

Consumer Behaviour

Spotify

Music creators

Music streaming and the attention recession have turned music into a background activity. Artists en masse are struggling to cut through the noise, realising that streaming is neither a place to build...

Music creator tools forecast
Moving towards a hybrid future

Cover image for Music creator tools forecast

Mark Mulligan

September 2021

creators

Apple

Spotify

Once upon a time, music software and hardware were distinct market segments, but now they are increasingly fusing into a network of hybrid creator tools ecosystems. Standalone hardware still has a vibrant...

Creator hubs
Creator tools’ next growth driver

Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

September 2021

creators

Spotify

artists

The emerging competitive dynamic between insurgents and incumbents is the catalyst for an unprecedented period of innovation in the music creator tools space. However, because this dynamic is underpinned...

Addressable creator markets
An opportunity with many layers

Cover image for Addressable creator markets

Mark Mulligan

July 2021

Apple

artists

The music creator tools space is undergoing a change that is simultaneously renaissance and transformation. The creator culture boom has driven an unprecedented degree of investment and investor interest....

Creator culture
The song becomes the feed

Mark Mulligan and Kriss Thakrar

April 2021

creators

Spotify

The creator tools marketplace is creating a revolution in the culture and business of music. The third decade of the millennium represents the opening of a new chapter for the music business, with the...

Creator Tools
The Music Industry’s New Top of Funnel

Mark Mulligan

November 2020

creators

Apple

Music production has traditionally been, at best, an adjacent industry to the recording business, and at worst simply a cost centre. That is now all changing. COVID-19’s disruption catalysed the already-rapid...