Swedish Music Market Grows

One of the few regions not complaining about the shrinking recorded music market is Sweden, where IFPI figures show it grew by 13.8 percent to 943 million Swedish kronor ($144.8 million) in 2012.

The main spike came from digital revenues, which were 12 percent up on 2011. Streaming services such as Spotify accounted for 90 percent of the digital revenues, up from 82 percent in 2011. CD sales dipped 15 percent.

The Swedish growth follows an 8 percent expansion in the Norwegian recorded music market, which may also benefit from the country’s government looking at blocking file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay.

In March 2009, the IFPI and several local movie studios began putting pressure on Norwegian Internet service provider Telenor to threaten music pirates with legal action.

Telenor has refused and the rightsholders took the case to court, but in November of that year a court ruled that the ISPs had no obligation to block torrent sites.

However, in May 2011, the Norwegian Ministry of Culture said it had put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act that would “give licensees the tools they need to follow up on copyright infringement on the Internet, while protecting privacy.”

Within a month, the Norwegian government is expected to present its new anti-piracy plan, although there’s mounting opposition from activists and technologists who see it as an increase in Internet censorship.