Many are experiencing financial uncertainty and layoffs, but the coronavirus situation has not led Norwegians to end their music subscriptions. Instead, a large Nordic music survey shows that the proportion of Norwegians who pay to stream music is increasing.
/ 07/05/2020 / Kristian DugstadThis is revealed in The Polaris Nordic Digital Music Survey 2020, a large Nordic survey on digital music usage conducted by YouGov for the three Nordic rights organizations TONO (N), Koda (DK) and Teosto (FIN).
– There has been speculation in the industry both in Norway and internationally about how the corona situation has affected music listening on streaming services. Now we have the answer. We are seeing a slight increase in music listening, and we are happy to report that there are actually more people paying for a music subscription than there were before the pandemic., says TONO's communications manager, Willy Martinsen.
Figures from April show, among other things, that 58% pay for a music service and Norwegians spend an average of 3,6 hours per day streaming music, the most of all the Nordic countries. In comparison, 56% had a paid or so-called bundled music subscription at the turn of the year.
– What we see is that the willingness to pay is increasing significantly in the age groups that previously had the most users of paid music services, but there is also an increase in general., says Martinsen.
In particular, Norwegians in the 18-29 age group have taken out their payment cards, but Norwegians aged 30-39 and Norwegians over 50 have also paid for streaming services to a greater extent since the pandemic began.
Several of the services are also seeing an increase in use after the outbreak of the pandemic.
The music industry is experiencing major challenges related to canceled concerts. The survey shows that Norwegian concertgoers attended an average of 3,3 concerts during 2019, compared to 3,1 concerts in 2018. This is the most of all the Nordic countries. In the past year, 62% of Norwegians went to at least one concert compared to 64% in 2018. Only the Danes had a higher proportion of concertgoers in the Nordic countries.
The survey also shows that Norwegians are more interested than their Nordic neighbors in smart speakers, more expensive streaming services with higher sound quality, combined streaming services for music, TV and games, and music with AI/VR experiences. On average, about 1 in 5 Norwegians are interested in such services.
In the new survey, 19% said they purchased music files as downloads in the past year, a slight decrease of one percentage point. 13% said they have purchased music on CD, down two percentage points from the previous year, and down 7 percentage points over the past three years. 8% said they have purchased vinyl and 4% said they have purchased music in other physical formats.
The Polaris Nordic Digital Music Survey has over 4000 respondents and has been conducted in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and now in 2020.
From previous years' editions of the Polaris Nordic Digital Music Survey:
2018: https://www.tono.no/ny-undersokelse-9-av-10-nordmenn-streamer-na-musikk/
2017: https://www.tono.no/undersokelse-8-10-nordmenn-streamer-musikk/
2015: https://www.tono.no/ny-undersokelse-radio-viktigste-kilde-for-a-oppdage-ny-musikk/
2014: https://www.tono.no/8-millioner-streamer-musikk-norden/
The case was updated on 11.05.20