An estimated 8 million Nordic music fans regularly use music streaming services such as Spotify or Wimp, according to a study from Polaris Nordic.
Spotify alone is estimated to have seven million users in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden – a significant portion of Spotify’s 40 million active monthly users worldwide.
The study reported that fully 78 percent of Nordic internet users aged 15 to 65 are digital music consumers and have used services such as YouTube, Spotify, Wimp or iTunes to access music content at some time in the past 12 months.
Scandy’s willing to pay for tunes
While most of the services offer a free option, 20 percent of the Nordic customers surveyed – about 3.5 million consumers – have paid for digital music (downloads or streaming) over the past year.
All four Nordic countries said the presence of a strong repertoire of local music has played a major part in the success of streaming in the north. A third of the survey respondents say it is easy to find local music via the digital music services.
Music is important
Nordic users said that listening to music plays an important role in their lives. Over half of the respondents say they would find it difficult or impossible to give up music listening.
The Polaris Nordic Digital Music Survey was conducted in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden in June 2014. The online survey targeted 4,000 internet users (1,000 per country) aged 15 to 65.
READ MORE: Streaming music's popular, but is it a boon or boondoggle?
The survey was commissioned by the three Nordic songwriting royalty collection bodies: Koda (Denmark and Sweden), Teosto (Finland) and Tono (Norway).
