Music subscriber market shares 2022

MIDiA has just released its annual ‘Music subscriber market shares’ report and dataset, with data for 23 DSPs across 33 different markets (clients can access it here). Here are some of the key global trends:

Music subscriptions may be recession-resilient, as China leads the way

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 pace. 

Home entertainment tends to perform well during recessions, not least because people are inclined to cut down on leisure spend (eating out, bars, clubs, etc.), and thus spend more time at home. In previous recessions, lipstick sales boomed, reflecting their role as an affordable luxury that consumers turn to when they can no longer afford the more expensive luxuries. Music subscriptions have a good chance of playing a similar role in the coming recession.

The early signs are positive (subscriber growth was stronger in the full year of 2021 than 2020), and though the first half (H1) of 2022 growth was down from H1 2021, this reflects the mature state of the streaming market in many markets, as much as it does global economic headwinds.

The evolution of the global music subscriber market is beginning to fork between the leading Western digital service providers (DSPs) and those in Asia – China especially so. Nearly all the leading DSPs continue to experience strong subscriber growth, but none more so than Chinese DSPs Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and NetEase Cloud Music. 

These were the key trends in 2021 and the first half of 2022:

• Subscribers: There were 616.2 million subscribers by the mid-point of 2022, up by 7.1% from the end of 2021. Total net subscriber additions for the first six months of 2022 (42.1 million) were down on the 53.8 million that were added one year earlier, hinting at the slowing global economy. However, more subscribers were added in 2021 than 2020
  
• Revenue: The $12.9 billion of subscription label trade revenue generated in 2021 was up by 23.1% on 2020, and it was the first year since 2017 that revenue growth exceeded subscriber growth, resulting in a 1.0% increase in global annual ARPU, reaching $22.42
  
• Spotify: With 187.8 million subscribers in Q2 2022, Spotify remained by far the largest DSP. However, its market share has steadily eroded since Q4 2020, and its Q2 2022 share of 30.5% was down from a high of 33.2% in Q2 2018
  
• Tencent Music Entertainment and NetEase Cloud Music: Spotify’s declining market share has much to do with the growth of the Chinese market (where Spotify does not operate). In Q4 2021, TME overtook Amazon Music to become the third largest DSP globally, and in Q2 2022 it had 82.7 million subscribers (13.4% market share). China has long been the world’s second largest subscriber market and is on track to soon surpass the US as the world’s largest
  
• Apple, Amazon, and YouTube: Amazon Music was the fourth largest DSP, with 82.2 million subscribers, and YouTube Music was fifth, with 55.1 million. Both gained share between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022, growing faster than the total market. While YouTube and Amazon both gained share in 2022, albeit it at a declining rate, second-placed Apple Music continued its long-term trend of underperforming the market, with its 84.7 million subscribers recording a 13.8% market share, down 1.2% from Q2 2021. 

The global music subscriber market is approaching a pivot point, with the slowdown in mature, Western markets contrasting with more dynamic growth in other regions. It is realistic to assume that the global recession and the organic maturation of the global subscriber market will result in some slowdown of growth in 2023, even if the sector remains otherwise resilient.

The slowing growth should be the catalyst for what needs to come next, especially in developed markets: unlocking growth pockets through differentiation. Western DSPs have managed to grow with largely undifferentiated product propositions. Music rightsholders should explore creative ways in which they can empower their DSP partners with differentiated content assets, enabling them to super-serve specific consumer segments and thus unlock extra growth within them.

If you are not yet a MIDiA client and would like to find out how to get access to this report and data then email stephen@midiaresearch.com

C.R.E.A.T.E. An entertainment manifesto

When we first formed MIDiA eight years ago, we saw the new entertainment world was going to require a new joined up approach for entertainment businesses. With the start of the ascent of the smartphone we made an intellectual bet that everything was going to become more interconnected, inter-dependent and inter-competitive. Our vision then, was to build analysis and data that cut across siloes, to help previously unrelated industries understand they were becoming connected. The ‘connecting the dots’ tagline that we launched with in 2014 was right for the time, but now the world has moved on. The dots are now connected. That job is done. Now it is time to decide what to do with those connections.

In more recent years we identified new drivers of the entertainment economy, such as:

• Fragmented Fandom
• The Attention Economy
• The Attention Recession
• Creator independence
• Rise of creator tools
• Reaggregation

When we introduced those concepts they took some time to land, but now are increasingly widely accepted as industry currency. Even other research companies have started following our lead, with webinars and research on the attention economy, the attention recession and fandom fragmentation.

But although those trends will continue to play crucial roles, it is an entirely new set of market dynamics that will shape the future as the world enters a period of uncertainty and disruption unprecedented in modern times:

• Attention inflation: As consumers return to pre-pandemic behaviours, they are trying to squeeze all their new-found entertainment behaviours into less available time. Multitasking is rocketing which means each entertainment minute is less valuable as it is increasingly being done alongside something else. Many more consumption hours than actual hours results in attention inflation.
• The splintering of culture: Water cooler moments may not yet be dead but they are fading. Hits are getting smaller (just ask Beyonce) and audiences are fragmenting. But cultural relevance can actually increase within these fragmented fanbases (again, just ask Beyonce). Culture is splintering but may end up more vibrant as a result.
• Scenes and identity: Underpinning and resulting from culture splintering is the rise of scenes, especially micro scenes which populate platforms like Twitter. Scenes are more than just groups of fans, they a cultural movements that that people look to for identity and belonging. Fandom is merely a subcomponent.
• Lean through: Consumers used to just, well, consume. Now though, every more of them want to participate. The line between creation and consumption is blurring. Leaning forward is no longer enough, now audiences want to lean in and create.
• The creator economy: Perhaps the single biggest shift in entertainment in recent years is the rise and rise of the creator economy, straddling virtually every entertainment format. The creator economy is so much more than vloggers and influencers. It represents a reshaping of culture, remuneration and audiences. As such it will reshape entertainment forever. 
• Post-peak growth: With inflation soaring and a recession looming, consumers will have less money to spend on entertainment and leisure. Some sectors will suffer, some will sustain but others will grow. Whether it is to survive or to thrive, entertainment companies will need to reshape both their strategies and purpose.
• Rediscovery is the future of discovery: The first phase of streaming was all about discovery. Now, with a surplus of supply and demand constrained by the attention recession, what consumers want as much as what is new, is to re-find what they already know and love.

Business as usual is gone. The next chapter of the business of entertainment will require a completely new approach. This is MIDiA’s C.R.E.A.T.E. Entertainment Manifesto for what is required of entertainment companies in this brave new world.

• Cultivate every moment: Multitasking means consumption minutes are losing value. Every moment needs to be made as valuable and as entertaining as it possibly can be. Entertainment companies need their audiences notice what they consume.
• Reward the creator economy: Streaming and social platforms are increasingly dependent on the long tail. The scale economics work for platforms by summing up a multiplicity of niches but they do not work for long tail creators. Platforms and rightsholders need to nurture not just harvest the creator economy.
• Empower the consumer as a creator: Lean through consumers are also super fans. More platforms and services need to give consumers the sort of participation tools that TikTok built is success upon. Not just because it is what audiences want but because it also builds fandom and amplifies entertainment brands.
• Add value and escapism: As consumers’ wallets tighten, subscriptions and ad spend are both at risk. But this need not be an entertainment Armageddon. Instead, entertainment companies should offer consumers what they want: 1) value for money, 2) escape from the harsh realities of daily life.
• Target the middle: While it is tempting to always chase the big hit, the reality is that hits are getting smaller. Success in these coming years will be most easily found by cultivating a collection of mid-sized hits rather than placing all bets on mega hits.
• Embrace scenes and identity: Scenes and identity are the undervalued super power of entertainment. Music, games, sports, creators, books, movies, TV shows – they all move people and they all help define who we are. Truly understanding and harnessing identity will be the difference between survive and thrive. 

We hope that the C.R.E.A.T.E. framework and our new Critical Developments coverage help companies and creators plot their paths through the troubled waters ahead. But even more important, is to develop a sense of purpose, a definition of why you do what you do, and to communicate that to your audiences and partners. The entertainment industries have 

Apple to launch subscription bundle – we called it!

In MIDiA’s 2020 Predictions report published in December 2019 we predicted that tech majors would start creating subscription bundles, with Apple leading the fray. Lo and behold, news has just come out that Apple is working on ‘Apple One’ – a multi-genre subscription bundle that will include Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and Apple News+.

This is what we said back in December:

“Expect Apple to experiment with paid bundles. Adding TV+ to its student Apple Music package is another test case and may soon see Arcade folded in also. With a global recession looming, Apple and Amazon will be well placed to grow market share.

We called it!

So why is Apple doing this, and why now?

With smartphone sales slowing, Apple needs another growth driver to maintain revenue growth. It is making this move now because, one, it needs the transition to start soon, and two, it is looking to profit from the recession. Standalone digital subscriptions are contract-free and so are vulnerable to cancellation. Additionally, they skew towards Millennials – the segment most likely to be hit hardest by any workforce reductions. Consumers who find themselves having to tighten their belts will not want to simply ditch their digital entertainment, however – it has become too important to them. So, a multi-subscription, value-for-money bundle will become particularly appealing during a recession. Apple is thus hoping to pick up price-sensitive subscribers during the economic downturn.

Apple also has an ace up its sleeve: device bundles. As we wrote in December:

“Currently, Apple’s mix of premium, standalone subscriptions are educating its user base that they have a clear monetary value. Apple will start to bundle these together with devices in order to maintain revenue growth in its otherwise slowing device sales segments. The initial bundling of Apple TV+ for free for one year may help acquire market share but it also lays the ground for a more comprehensive and structured bundling strategy. By tying subscriptions into long-term, need-to-have relationships – i.e. phones and shipping – […] tech majors could gain at the expense of standalone subscriptions.

Bundling used to be the sole domain of Telco’s but the tech majors are looking to get in on the act. Apple can use Apple One to increase device prices, e.g. pay $200 more to get an iPhone with a lifetime of unlimited music, video, games and extra cloud storage. By doing so it both increases device revenue (and after all, Apple is still a device company and is measured that way by investors) and taps into an entirely different purchase decision cycle. Devices are need-to-have and if you are in the market for a high-end device, adding on 15% for unlimited content is a much easier sell than trying to sell the subscription standalone.

In doing all of this, Apple is of course taking a leaf out of Amazon’s book. Amazon has built the core of its streaming businesses around the Prime bundle. In doing so, it has the additional benefit of creating a recession-proof bundle (everyone still needs to buy stuff) – one which is proving its worth already, if it’s incredibly successful Q2 is anything to go by. As we enter the recession, standalone subscriptions like Spotify and Netflix are vulnerable to increased churn. Apple and Amazon will be waiting to pick up the pieces.

New Webinar on What Comes After Lockdown

Want to know what happens in the post-Lockdown era? Join us for our free-to-attend Recovery Economics webinar tomorrow (Wednesday 10^th June) at 4pm BST / 11am EST / 8am PT for insight on music, radio, games, TV, sports and media.

We will be presenting an overview of MIDiA’s latest research thesis: Recovery Economics. This is our framework for identifying which changed need states that emerged during lockdown will form the basis for new behaviours post-lockdown and what you need to do in order to adapt to this new normal.

What is clear is that simply doing more of the same is not a strategy. The Covid-19 lockdown created severe dislocation across many entertainment sectors but also a host of new growth opportunities. As we emerge from lockdown and enter the early stages of a global economic recession, some of these ‘new-normal’ business models will grow further, presenting increased competition for the ‘old normal’. New and established players alike will have to play by different rules in this coming period, dealing with challenges such as permanent changes to lifestyles, weakening consumer spending and ever growing competition for attention.

In the webinar we will explain how this will look across the music, TV, film, games, radio, sports and media industries.

Register now!

The Attention Economy Has Peaked. Now What?

Regular followers of MIDiA will know that we’ve been writing about the attention economy for a number of years now. Throughout 2019 we have been building the concept that we have arrived at peak in the attention economy – that all of the addressable free time has been addressed. In 2017, Netflix’s Reed Hastings said sleep was his biggest enemy. By 2019 he claimed Netflix was competing more with Fortnite than HBO (it wasn’t really, but the concept of competing in adjacent markets is valid). In the old world, media was nicely siloed by dedicated formats and hardware (print newspapers, books, DVDs, CDs, radio sets). Now, though, we access through devices where everything is separated by nothing more than a finger swipe. Attention saturation was always going to be an inevitability, not a possibility. The important question is not why this happening, but what will come next and what the right strategies are for surviving and thriving in this post-peak world.

A mine full of canaries?

What got MIDiA first thinking about peak attention was seeing the mobile gaming audience declining every quarter in our quarterly tracker surveys. Mobile games were the canary in the mine for peak attention. When we first got mobile phones, we didn’t have a huge amount to do with them. We couldn’t watch our favourite shows, and we couldn’t easily (legally) listen to new music. So many consumers filled their ‘dead time’ by playing games, as they were de rigueurin the early days of the app stores. Before long casual gamers were the core audience of titles like Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, while your middle-aged aunt was spamming you with Facebook invitations to play Candy Crush Saga. Once Netflix, Spotify and others had got traction, however, those casual gamers started reverting to consuming the content they actually liked the most. The result was a long steady decline in the mobile gaming audience. Now, music looks like it may be following suit.

Across the US, UK, Australia and Canada, the share of people that listen to the radio declined steadily between Q1 2018 and Q2 2019. Meanwhile, those streaming audio for free remained relatively flat. The net result is that the combined audio audience declined. So many lapsing radio listeners exited the audio market as a whole (though a share shifted to podcasts, which is not considered in the above chart). The ‘share of ear’ battle is looking a lot like a minor theatre of conflict in a much larger conflagration. Amazon will continue to do a good job of shifting older, high-net-worth consumers to streaming, but that is not enough to stem the tide – especially as Amazon’s global footprint is unevenly distributed.

This is what happens in the era of attention saturation.

Social video is eating the world

Four years ago, MIDiA argued that video was eating the world. Now social video is eating the world. Video is becoming the omnipotent format through which we communicate, consume and share. Social video is eating everything. Captioning looked like it was heralding a new era of silent cinema, but it was in fact a trojan horse – a means of enabling us to fit extra video consumption into our wider consumption patterns. Over time, though, sound has become more important and with the increased tolerance of video we are now far more willing to unmute. Nowhere is this better seen than Instagram and TikTok. Audio is the victim in that equation. Not only are there are many other scenarios where audio is slipping, there are even more scenarios where other media formats are losing out. For example, Epic Games’ decision to allow Fortnite players to watch live video of the Fortnite World Cup while gaming hints at how games companies understand that there is a delicate balance between video extending brand reach and competing directly for gaming time.

Looking back gives us a feel for what comes next

Understanding what comes next in a saturated attention world requires looking back at previous markets that have peaked. The mobile phone and PC markets give us some pointers, butthe industrial revolution’s impact on the labour market is an even more useful analogue. Attention is like labour. It is a product of human behaviour and it is scarce. Digital content is analogous to the labour market, and content supply is now beginning to exceed attention output. This is already translating into increased customer acquisition and retention costs.

This is exactly the wrong time for bringing more content to market, but that is exactly what is happening. Nowhere is this better seen that the video subscriptions space with a blizzard-like flurry of new services from Disney, Warner, Apple, Discovery and NBC.

The net result of an over-supply of content is that attention saturation will become an attention deficit for many players, Netflix included. The marketplace needs a new currency for measuring success and monetising audiences.

The MIDiA Attention Economy Event

This is where I am going to cut to credits, leaving you on a cliff edge. For those of you in London next Wednesday (November 20th), come along to our free-to-attend attention economy event, where you can hear my colleague Karol Severin present our attention saturationresearch and our take on what will be the next audience currency that content providers will need to compete for. For those of you not in London there will also be a live stream, which you will be able to find here at 7pm GMT. Also, check back in next week when I will post the next chapter in this story.

NOTE: I shamelessly sat on the shoulders of giants in this post – these ideas were collectively crafted by the entire, amazingly talented MIDiA team.

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

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 to drive revenue. Unlike video, where pricing has increased above inflation, music has stayed at $9.99 so has deflated in real terms. On the case, Spotify is reported to be experimenting with increasing family plan pricing by 13% in Nordic markets. An encouraging move, but falls short of what is needed.

Viacom and CBS, old flames: Back in 1999 Viacom and CBS merged in a deal valued at $35.6 billion. Things didn’t work out and the companies parted ways in 2005. Now, 20 years on, they’re at it again. This time CBS is buying Viacom in an all-stock deal valued at $28 billion that would consolidate 22% of US TV audience share. It is a very different move from 1999, when the deal saw the companies on the offensive. This is a defensive move against digital disruption. As Disney and Fox have shown, media companies need to be really big to take on tech companies. Expect more media company strategic mergers and acquisitions over the coming years.

Twitch, user revolt: Amazon’s games video streaming platform Twitch finds itself in an awkward spat with top Fortnite gamer Ninja. Twitch promoted other channels on Ninja’s channel, including inadvertently promoting porn. Ninja promptly left Twitch, lured by Microsoft’s deep pockets to switch allegiance to Mixer. Ironically, the big-pay-for-smaller-audience move is similar to the Top Gear presenters’ switch from the BBC to Amazon. Now Amazon knows how it feels. Before it happens again, it needs to decide whether streamers own their own channels – or whether it does.

Tencent, bleeding edge: Though the impending 30X EBITDA purchase of 10% of UMG has got the world’s attention right now, music has always been something of a side bet for Tencent. Games are more central to Tencent’s strategy. Still smarting from the Chinese authorities suddenly playing regulatory hardball on its domestic games business, Tencent is finding its stride again, including a partnership with chipmaker Qualcomm to innovate on the ‘bleeding edge’ of (mobile) games.

Nike, sneaker revolution: Who said subscriptions had to be digital? Nike has just launched a trainer / sneaker subscription aimed at kids. Well, it’s actually aimed at the parents of kids, with a monthly fee for quarterly, bimonthly or monthly purchases that results in net savings on trainers. Fast-growing kids constantly need new shoes, and this move reduces the risk of brand churn with cost-conscious parents. Footwear business economics aside, the growing legacy of digital content is familiarising consumers with subscription relationships.

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

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 market share. Subscriber growth isn’t the problem though, revenue is. As mature markets slow, emerging markets will keep subscriber growth up but with lower APRU will bring less revenue. Spotify needs a revenue plan B. If podcast revenue is it, then it needs to start delivering, fast.

Fortnite World Cup: It can be hard to appreciate the scale of transformative change while it is still happening. A few years from now we’ll probably look back at the late 2010s as when e-sports started to emerge as a global-scale sport in its own right. Epic Games’ inaugural Fortnite World Cup pulled in 2.3 million viewers on YouTube and Twitch, was played in the Arthur Ashe Stadium and the singles winner picked up more prize money ($3 million) than Tiger Woods at the Masters and Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon.

Facebook trying to do an Apple, and an Amazon: With 140 million daily users of its Watch video service, Facebook is positioning to become the video powerhouse it always looked like it could be. Now it is trying to follow in Apple and Amazon’s footsteps and make itself a video device company too. Currently in talks with all its key video competitors, Facebook wants to add streaming to its forthcoming video calling device. That would leave Alphabet as the only tech major without a serious video household device play (unless you count Android TV).

Ticking time bomb?: Having recently hit 120 million users in India, TikTok clearly has scale, but it also has a rights problem, calling in the UK Copyright Tribunal to resolve a dispute with digital licensing body ICE, which characterised TikTok as being ‘unlicensed’. This feels a lot like the days when YouTube was first carving out licenses. Sooner or later TikTok is going to need a licensing framework that rights holders will sign off on. Matters just took a twist with TikTok poaching ICE’s Head of Rights and Repertoire. It’ll take more than that though to fix this structural challenge. 

We’re competing with Fornite: Yes, more Fortnite….fresh from World Cup success and on the eve of the Ashes, the English Cricket Board said ‘There’s 200 million players of Fortnite…that is who we are competing against.’ Do not mistake this for a uniquely cricket problem, nor even a uniquely sports problem. In the attention economy everyone is competing against everyone. And while Fornite might be the go-to for middle-aged execs bemoaning attention competition (yes that means you Reed Hastings) the trend is bigger than Fortnite alone, way bigger.

From Ownership to Access

Last Wednesday we held the third MIDiA Quarterly forum, exploring the shift from ownership to access across different media industries. In addition to MIDiA analyst presentations we had panellists from Sky, The Economist, Beggars Group, Reed Smith and Readly. The event was held at The Ministry in London and was a great success. Be sure to make it to our next one! Here are some of the key themes we explored.

Change is a coming

We opened with three quotes that summarise the tensions and transformations taking place in the digital content marketplace:

 ‘The fine wines of France are not merely content for the glass making industry’, Andrew Lloyd-Webber

‘We’re competing with sleep…sleep is my greatest enemy’, Reed Hastings, Netflix

‘Content may still be king but distribution is the queen and she wears the trousers’, Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed

All three quotes represent very different worldviews and illustrate how different things can look from the perspective of the companies being disrupted, those doing the disruption and those building businesses to harness the disruption. All three viewpoints are simultaneously valid, but the media landscape is changing at rapid pace, and fighting a rear-guard action against change only gives the disruptors a freer rein to, well, disrupt.

Across most media industries – music, video and news especially, the future of content monetisation will be built around advertising for the mass market and subscriptions for the aficionados, while additional opportunities exist for one-off transactions within both environments (e.g. Tencent live streaming  Chinese boyband TFBoysand Epic Games selling $100 million a month of virtual items in Fortnite). What is going as a mainstream proposition is selling physical media, though niche markets for collectables will thrive—ironically exactly because of the demise of physical media. In an age without shelves full of CDs, DVDs and games, collectors want a physical manifestation of their tastes.

Music and video are plotting the most directly comparable paths towards access-based models, though there are also some very telling differences:

• Scale:Globally there were 206 million music subscribers at the end of 2017, compared to 452 million video subscribers. But while subscriptions represented 45% of retail music revenues, it was just 12% of pay-TV revenues. Music though is a far smaller industry than pay-TV (11% of the size), so like-for-like comparisons aren’t always that useful.
• Concentration:What is worth comparing though, is the degree of market concentration. In music, the top four subscription services account for 72% of subscribers, compared to just 54% for video. And while the long tail for music services isn’t very, well, long, in video there is a vast number of smaller services: there are around 60 different services in the US alone.
• Variety:While music services largely offer the same catalogue, with the same usage terms at the same price, video is defined by diversity and exclusives. Using the US as an example again, more than half of the services are niche – such as Korean drama, 4K nature, horror, reality – and there are 23, yes 23, different price points.

Aside the different heritages of these industries – consumers are used to paying for different slices of TV content, there is another key reason for the differences: rights holder distribution. In music three big companies account for the majority of revenues; in TV there are dozens of key studios and networks. This means that in video, the distribution companies can play rights holders off each other and effectively set the pace of change. In music, the major record labels shape the market.

This dynamic is what Clayton Christensen outlined in the Innovator’s Dilemma. There are two key types of innovation:

1. Sustaining innovations:the smaller, more evolutionary changes that companies make to improve their existing products. Every company does this if they can, it’s how to maintain the status quo and grow revenues predictably
2. Disruptive innovations:these are dramatic, industry-altering changes that rarely come from the incumbents but instead from disruptive new entrants. P2P file sharing was the big one that shook the TV and music industries. TV responded by fighting free with free, by launching services like iPlayer, ABC.com and Hulu. The music industry responded by licensing to the iTunes Music store. One embraced disruption, one fought it.

Talking of disruption, the big existential threat media companies will have to face over the coming decade, is ceding power, willingly or otherwise, to the tech majors (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook). Europe’s Article 13aims to offset some of the growing reach of the tech majors, but ultimately these companies will shape the future of media, across both ad supported and subscription models.

The tech majors generated $40.7 billion in ad revenue in Q1 2018 alone, including around $2 billion for Amazon, the global advertising revenue powerhouse that many still aren’t paying enough attention to. The tech majors have already sucked away much of the news industry’s audience and ad revenues; with assets such as YouTube and IGTVthey are competing for radio and TV too. But it is the content and services revenue that media companies need to pay most attention to. With $16.9 billion in Q1 alone – nearly the same as the recorded music market for the entirety of 2017, this is a sector that all four tech majors are taking seriously, very seriously. And even though Facebook is a late arrival to the party, it is making up for lost time with its new music offeringand evolving video strategy.

The reason all this matters for media companies is that the strategic objectives of the tech major are rarely aligned with those of media companies. The tech majors each use media as a means to an end, a tool for driving their core strategy. Access based models underpin the content strategies of these companies who often control distribution and access to consumers via tools such as app stores, mobile operating systems, search and social platforms. Thus, the shift from ownership to access could also translate into a shift towards a tech major dominated media world.

Just What Is Tencent Up To With Streaming?

Tencent is building a global streaming empire. Back in December 2017 Tencent Music did a 10% equity swap deal with Spotify and now it has led a $115 million investment round for India-based streaming service Gaana. India may only be a small subscription market, with just 1.1 million paid subscribers at the end of 2016, but it one dominated by local players and has massive free streaming potential. Tencent now has major streaming stakes that give it reach across Asia, Europe and the Americas. The key missing parts are the Middle East and North Africa (Anghami is probably waiting for the phone to ring). Right now, Tencent has a streaming foothold in the world’s three largest countries:

1. China: population 1.4 billion. 100% ownership of QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo which together account for 70% of subscribers
2. India: population 1.3 billion. Undisclosed ownership of top three streaming service Gaana
3. US: 330 million. 10% ownership of leading subscription service

What Tencent is doing is building a global network of strategic positions in the streaming market that individually might not have global influence, but, collectively could be brought to bear to in an impactful way. Much like John Malone’s Liberty Media, Tencent is taking minority stakes in a strategically selected portfolio of companies. This provides it with the ability to exert some degree of influence and extract some benefit without the risk and resource required for a majority ownership. Minority stakes can also be used as beachheads for majority ownership further down the line.

In some respects, Tencent does not have a huge amount of choice in the matter. Last year the Chinese government placed restrictions on the amount Chinese companies could spend on overseas companies, in order to slow the outflow of capital from China. But, rather than let this be a hindrance Tencent is now using the policy to shape a bold internationalisation strategy. Coupled with other minority investments (12% in Snap Inc., 5% of Tesla) Tencent is positioning itself to be king maker in the future of digital media.

The Top TV Shows Of 2017, And The Inexorable Rise Of Netflix

This is a guest post by MIDiA’s Tim Mulligan (also my brother!)

For the past 15 months MIDiA Research has been tracking every quarter more than 60 leading TV shows across the US, UK, Canada and Australia. With the fragmentation of TV audiences and the rise of streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video that are notoriously guarded with their data, it is becoming progressively more difficult for TV companies and advertisers to know just how popular individual TV shows actually are. Many are increasingly turning to social media as a guide to popularity, but these are demographically skewed. For example, the audiences of Facebook and Twitter are both older, so rankings based on these platforms skew results towards shows that are popular among older consumers. This is why the likes of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones usually top such rankings. (More than half of the audiences for both shows are aged 35 and above, compared to, for example, just 36% for 13 Reasons Why).

This is why we developed the MIDiA TV Show Brand Tracker, surveying 3,500 consumers, to track popularity of shows with a neutral and objective methodology. The results provide a unique view of which shows are resonating with consumers in the streaming era.

CBS’s The Big Bang Theory tops MIDiA’s Brand Tracker rankings with an average 45% fan penetration across all of 2017. The Big Bang Theory tends to underreport on Twitter and Facebook rankings but has topped our list in each quarter in every market except for the UK where it is shunted into third place by the BBC’s Sherlock and ITV’s Broadchurch. CBS also takes second spot with 41% fan penetration, holding the same position in the US and Australia, but slipping to third in Canada and sixth in the UK.

2017 was a massive year for HBO’s Game of Thrones with season 7 premiering in July, which drove a three-percentage-point spike in fandom in Q3 – up to 33%. Game of Thrones is a top-four show across all four markets surveyed. Although Game of Thrones is HBO’s only show in the top 20, the network has three other shows in the Top 40 including Westworld (which maintained strong fandom despite having aired in December 2016, suggesting that season 2 will get off to a strong start in 2018).

The BBC is one of the strongest performing networks with three shows in the top 20. AMC’s The Walking Dead takes sixth position with 27% penetration, but fandom varies markedly by market, slipping to just 10^th in the UK.

Perhaps the biggest story of 2017 is the rise of Netflix as a TV network. Netflix, with seven, has more shows than any other in the top 40, though only two are in the top 20 (Stranger Things and House of Cards). Superhero shows have been a big win for Netflix with Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Daredevil all in the top 40. But, the one to pay attention to is 13 Reasons Why at number 23, driven largely by 16-24-year-old viewers. In the post-linear schedule world Netflix has learned how to super serve audience segments with shows that are ‘prime time’ titles within its service that would not be able to occupy prime time slots on broadcast TV because their appeal to older audiences is limited.

Stranger Things was Netflix’s biggest hit of 2017, taking eighth spot overall, but first among 16-19 year olds and second place for 20-24 year olds. Netflix might have built its revenue business around 25-44 year olds but it is winning the programming battle for younger millennials. Traditional TV networks should pay heed.

If you would like to learn more about MIDiA’s TV Brand Tracker and how to get access to the data, email us at info@midiaresearch.com