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After Years of Recovery, Music Sales Are Now Declining In Sweden…

Paul Resnikoff
27

swedishsales2014

 

The 2014 decline, revealed this morning by IFPI Sweden, mirrors a similar drop in Norway.  Both countries are among the earliest and most aggressive adopters of streaming music formats.

 

swedenmusicsales2014-2

(source: IFPI Sweden)

27 Responses

    • Paul Resnikoff

      TSEK
      1998 1,545,629
      1999 1,607,102
      2000 1,654,459
      2001 1,648,513
      2002 1,554,057
      2003 1,326,084
      2004 1,094,753
      2005 975,329
      2006 941,501
      2007 842,066
      2008 781,930
      2009 861,433
      2010 825,119
      2011 829,251
      2012 943,563
      2013 991,233
      2014 987,096

      • Name2

        2013 and 2014 EACH have higher revenue than any single year since 2004.

        So. Revenues are at a 10-year high.

        HTH.

        • Paul Resnikoff

          Sales are usually measured year-over-year. That’s what this article is about, though yes, 2014 was better than the lowest years.

          • Remi Swierczek

            Streaming NIRVANA LAND!

            Counting inflation today is less than half of 2000
            …but superman EK will change it soon!

            2000 1,654,459

            2014 987,096

          • KS2 Problema

            Looks to me like sales are roughly as high as they’ve been since around 2005. That’s pretty close to a decade.

            Spin it as you wish, the graph is pretty self-evident.

  2. Name2

    Guess what else?

    Spotify launched October 2008.

    From 2010 onwards (last 5 years), revenue was up every year over prev.

  3. Name2

    Thank you for the extra graph.

    The yellow line quickly makes the point that 2008 – the year Spotify was launched – represented an all-time low in revenue, and the revenue trend since then is steadily upward.

    • David

      Only if by ‘steadily upward’ you mean ‘first up, then down, then flat, then up, then down’.

      I was going to add a point about inflation, but on a quick check I see that inflation rates in Sweden were actually negative (deflationary) over much of this period, so the inflation-adjusted figures might be rather better.

      • Name2

        Calculate the year-to-year losses as a percentage over previous year.

        The ONLY downturn less drastic than 2013-2014 (0.4%, which apparently gets a headline) is 2000-2001 (0.35%).

        Current year-to-year loss is the smallest in _13_ years.

        Non-streaming is cratering, and the only sound the universe hears (from Sweden at least) is a 0.4% downturn from the best number in nine years.

  5. Name2

    2014 over 2013:

    Physical album sale revenues down 33.8%.
    Digital downloads revenues down 10.1%

    Overall revenue decline? 0.4%

    So a drastic, and a near-catastrophic drop of the two most “important” formats (per the DMN commentariat) hardly made a blip in the overall picture.

  6. Sound Exchange

    where the article about Sound Exchange recent 2014 distribution?

    For a digital music site, failing to cover that, speaks volume.

    • Because

      DMN only cover streaming when it’s bad news.

      Good news is ignored.

      • Name2

        In this case, they’re taking news that’s good for the industry, and calling it bad.

        After all, what are you going to believe? The numbers or DMN headlines?

    • Name2

      Isn’t it only the USA that’s saddled with Sound Exchange?

      • Name2

        No, I meant a corporate overlord which can’t find Ted Nugent and keeps going to court for more money for itself – is any civilized country saddled with THAT kind of nonsense?

  7. jw

    Just because revenues are down year over year doesn’t mean that they’re declining as a trend.

    Sales were down in 2010, also, but the overall trend continued upward.

    “…are now declining” suggests that there’s reason to believe they’ll be down next year, & there’s no indication of that.

    • Anonymous

      You spend a lot of time on this site for someone who thinks music has no value and no one wants it, even when it’s free. Can’t help but wonder why you waste your time here.

      p.s. that article doesn’t actually support the broad claim you’re making.

      • Name2

        I’m a full-blown DMNer. It doesn’t matter that facts don’t match my summary headlines.

    • jw

      This article doesn’t seem terribly reliable. Guy doesn’t even know that leeches are users currently downloading & seeds are users offering the complete download for upload. The sum is the total number of current connections to the torrent, not the total number of snatches. (Users could download the file, then disconnect from the torrent & not be accounted for in either figure.)

      It’s tough to suss out how the Pirate Bay is calculating their top 100, whether it’s by total number of active connections, total number of completed downloads, or amount of data transferred. If it’s data transferred, that’s going to favor the larger torrent types (video, apps, etc), rather than the music which comes in at a fraction of the size. Given the smaller file size & quicker download time, there are also likely to be less active connections to music torrents because you can more quickly download the files & disconnect from the torrent.

      I’m not sure that the Pirate Bay have their method documented anywhere, but that would be essential to fact checking this article.

  11. JTVDigital

    Similar trend than in Norway then.
    Thanks to streaming (Spotify in that case) the fall of recorded music revenues has been slowed down, stabilized and on its way to (partial) recovery.