Finns Do Worse Than Neighbours

The Finnish music market is reporting results even worse than its Swedish and Norwegian neighbours, as industry income dropped 14 percent from $47.66 million to $40.59 million.

Sweden and Norway have already reported business is down, but only by half as much as the Finns have suffered.

The pattern is similar in all three countries as the main problem is that sales from downloads and streaming are being outstripped by plummeting physical sales. Figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry have the value of 2014 physical sales in Finland down by 33.8 percent from $29.5 million to just $19.48.

CD album unit sales fell by 28.8 percent to 2.5 million. Although music streaming is growing rapidly and revenues from subscription and ad-supported services such as Spotify leapt 38 percent to $18.22 million, over half of that is needed to plug the hole in physical sales.

Detailed digital market figures show that ad-supported streaming is bigger than the download market in Finland – and the subscription streaming market is seven times its size.

“We have been slower than in the other Nordic countries with streaming, so we expect the overall market to grow this year,” said Antti Kotilainen from the IFPI’s Finnish office.