Reports: Music

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.

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Data briefing
South Korea music market

Mark Mulligan

1 Jun 2023

Business Strategy

This report presents key music market metrics for South Korea. All data is domestic SouthKorean data unless otherwise stated below. The datasets leveraged for this report include: Music company financials and market shares. This data refers to revenue generated by South Korean companies and thus includes both domestic and international revenue MIDi...

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Artists direct
Focus on passion, not professionalism

Tatiana Cirisano

2 May 2023

Spotify Spotify SoundCloud

All eyes of the music business are on artists direct, the fastest-growing segment of the industry. But the 6.4 million artists in this segment are far from a unified group, and have varied aspirations, challenges, and needs. MIDiA’s 2023 creator survey reflects that the two largest sub-segments of artists direct are those who seek full-time music...

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AI and the future of music
The future is already here

Mark Mulligan, Hanna Kahlert and Tatiana Cirisano

2 May 2023

Spotify SoundCloud Netflix

Unlike most new technology hype cycles, the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) has on the world is already surpassing expectations. Within the music industry, AI will largely be an enabler and accelerant of already-existing trends and market shifts: the growth of self-releasing artists, the consumerisation of music-making, and the resulting o...

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US millennial snapshot
A looming generational blind spot

Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

3 Apr 2023

Spotify YouTube Deezer

In the US, 25-34-year-olds are the music industry’s most valuable segment. Yet their relationship with streaming is tenuous. Streaming is not meeting these consumers’ need for a more social, less algorithm-driven experience. What is more, they appear most likely to give their subscriptions up.

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Podcasts and music streaming
Mirrored growth

Annie Langston

3 Apr 2023

Apple Apple iTunes

The economic recession, and related layoffs at major podcasting divisions, have some questioning the future of the format. However, podcasts are following a similar trajectory as music did in its transition to streaming and have reached critical mass — 26% consumer penetration — faster than music streaming subscriptions did.

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Recorded music market 2022
Reality bites

Mark Mulligan

17 Mar 2023

TuneCore Music streaming Kobalt

Following a spectacular year of growth in 2021, global recorded music revenue growth slowed significantly in 2022, due to the combined impact of global economic headwinds and growth slowdown in mature streaming markets. Context, though, is everything – not many industries can deliver solid growth while the global economy is in turmoil, ad markets...

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Music’s Instagram moment
The social music creation revolution

Tatiana Cirisano

1 Mar 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 (AI). The result could be a new set of music creation and re-creation tools, integrated within social platforms and geared towards casual consumer...

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Kill the campaign
Music marketing needs branding, not direct response

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

1 Feb 2023

Streaming Spotify Marketing

The debate over a new streaming royalties regime is capturing attention, but economics will not fix the underlying paradigm shifts that are the true cause for streaming’s problems: there is not enough money to go around for the ballooning amount of music on streaming services, and passive consumption is the new norm.

Cover image for Music discovery snapshot Q3 2022

Music discovery snapshot Q3 2022
Fandom under threat

Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

4 Jan 2023

Spotify YouTube YouTube Music

Despite the hyper-saturated music landscape, music discovery is generally not a problem for most consumers. Gen Z and millennials have similar music discovery habits, but gen Z struggle slightly more with discovery and are more influenced by TikTok, while millennials are perhaps the last generation to see radio as a main source of music discovery.

Cover image for Music industry earnings Q3 2022

Music industry earnings Q3 2022
Pre-recession growth

Mark Mulligan

20 Dec 2022

Spotify Pandora Slacker

The early 2020s saw an influx of capital into the music business, with the promise of music rights being an asset class that was uncorrelated with the wider economy. The irony is that as music catalogue investments slowed (due to rising costs of capital), the first nine months of 2022 saw the music business deliver a performance that suggests the i...

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares 2022

Music subscriber market shares 2022
Chinese Dragon

Mark Mulligan

5 Dec 2022

Business Strategy

As the world edges towards a recession, the music streaming market continues to stand strong. Despite indications of slowdown in some markets, the global music subscriber market remains buoyant. Growth, though, is uneven, with a number of leading streaming services outpacing the rest, especially the Chinese ones, which are now setting the global pa...

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DSP user profiles
Small is beautiful

Mark Mulligan

29 Nov 2022

Spotify YouTube Deezer

With streaming music now in its mature growth stage in most leading music markets, differentiation will be key to unlocking further growth pockets. While this will likely require innovation in both product and licensing, there are already clear signs that the streaming services are developing userbases with distinct and varied behaviours and charac...

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A field of all levels
Strategizing music’s attention economy

Tatiana Cirisano

29 Nov 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 of artists. With all these generations now competing in the same playing field, artist strategy depends strongly on the era in which they rose to pr...

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Streaming’s next growth phase
The necessity of differentiation

Tatiana Cirisano

28 Oct 2022

Apple Spotify YouTube

DSPs have long been able to grow their subscriber bases despite all offering essentially the same experience. Yet the freemium model is reaching a saturation point, putting slow but steady pressure on DSPs to find new ways to grow subscribers and revenue.

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State of the music creator economy
Post-lockdown growth

Mark Mulligan, Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

30 Sep 2022

Apple Spotify live

The Covid pandemic created a unique catalyst for the music creator economy. More time on hands and more cash in pockets gave novices and veterans alike the opportunity to spend both more time and money making music. Though the pandemic was a peak, it also marked the start of a new era for the music creator economy across every one of its aspects, f...

Cover image for Content is king, distribution is queen but retention is revolutionary

Content is king, distribution is queen but retention is revolutionary

Tim Mulligan and Hanna Kahlert

22 Sep 2022

Free Report

Video Music Games

Retention is the new cornerstone of subscription in an era of accelerating disruption. On the 22nd of September, 2022, at 4:30 pm BST, MIDiA's lead video analyst, Tim Mulligan, will be joined by Nada Arnot, SVP of Marketing at BritBox, Nii Mantse Addy, CMO and Head of Marketing at Philo, Nina Laricheva, CEO of Marquee TV, and Hanna Kahlert, Media a...

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Scenes
A new lens for music marketing

Mark Mulligan and Tatiana Cirisano

30 Aug 2022

Spotify YouTube Facebook

Entertainment consumption and fandom are fragmenting in the internet era as a result of the steady erosion of linear audiences, the rise of asynchronous consumption, and the increased sophistication of personalisation algorithms. Consequently, identity and culture are fragmenting as well.

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Music sync market forecast
Production libraries raise the pitch

Kriss Thakrar and Tatiana Cirisano

27 Jul 2022

YouTube SoundCloud Netflix

Amid fragmenting fandom and the attention recession, sync is more important than ever as a tool for both revenue generation and marketing. There are also dozens of emerging use cases for sync, from creator content to fitness platforms and virtual spaces in the evolving metaverse.

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Building a fan economy with Fan-Powered Royalties

Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Perry Gresham

12 Jul 2022

Free Report

Creators artist income Streaming economics

Music streaming has helped the music industry return to growth over the past decade, but many creators feel left behind. The streaming economy has reached a point where the creator remuneration gap can no longer be ignored. It is no secret that many music artists are dissatisfied with the relationship between the consumption of their music on strea...

Cover image for MIDiA Research 2022-2030 global music forecasts

MIDiA Research 2022-2030 global music forecasts
The new era of growth

Mark Mulligan

5 Jul 2022

Business Strategy

This report presents the key figures, trends and drivers of MIDiA’s music forecast model. The figures presented in this report are both retail and labeltrade values and are in billions of US dollars – unless otherwise stated. An Excel file posted alongside this report provides complete country-level data, including DSP market shares and a detai...

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