Whither goes Scandinavia, so goes the industry — or maybe it’s the other way around. IFPI Denmark released a year-over-year comparison of streaming uptake in the first half of each year. Streaming increased 40 percent, from 45% of music conumption to 63%.
Scandinavia is sometimes considered a bellwether of digital music evolution, largely because of Spotify’s experiment in piracy reduction in Sweden that started in 2008 and expanded globally with a music service across 56 nations. (Spotify launched its U.S. service in 2011.)
The Denmark metrics align with the top line of Nielsen Audio’s most recent year-over-year report, which shows 42% increase in U.S. streaming. that number included video streaming. When that statistic is removed, the audio-only streaming gain rises to 50 percent.
The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) report angles into digital music consumption generally, compared to CDs. In that view, music file downloads decreased over 50% while streaming rose — a sharper corresponding decline than revealed in the U.S. by Nielsen. It appears that in the Danish market, streaming is cleanly displacing music purchases. CD-buying went down 44%.