Polaris Digital Music Survey 2024:
Spotify continues to grow in Norway, and in 2024 will be a larger music streaming service than YouTube for the first time. 95 percent of Norwegians now stream music, and 63 percent of them pay for music streaming. Norwegians are thus the most willing to pay for music in the entire Nordic region.
/ 27/06/2024 / Willy MartinsenThe findings come from The Polaris Digital Music Survey, a survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of TONO and TONO's Danish and Finnish sister societies. The survey has been conducted seven times over ten years and maps the development of music habits in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
– Spotify continues to grow in Norway, and for the first time is used more than YouTube for music streaming. In fact, almost 7 out of 10 Norwegians who stream music are Spotify customers. YouTube is the second largest music streaming service, but has had a strong downward trend over several years. 6 out of 10 music streamers, 61 percent, now use YouTube for music streaming, a decrease from 73 percent in 2020, says Willy Martinsen, Communications Director at TONO.
It is nevertheless worth noting that 11 percent of music streaming respondents state that they use YouTube Music, the company's dedicated music streaming service, which is thus more widely used than Apple Music (9 percent), Soundcloud (7 percent), Tidal (6 percent) and Deezer (3 percent).
Norwegians also consume music and music videos on channels such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, each of which is used by 19 percent of Norwegians.
The proportion of Norwegians who stream music has increased from 91 to 95 percent in two years, and on average Norwegians listen to music for 3,7 hours a day. Here, Norwegians are on par with the rest of the Nordic countries. But in one area, Norwegians stand out.
– We can be proud that no one in the Nordic region is more willing to pay for music than Norwegians. 6 out of 10 Norwegian music streamers have a paid subscription to Spotify or another service, as opposed to advertising-based subscriptions. This is both more than two years ago, and in some cases significantly better than in the rest of the Nordic region. The situation is worst in Finland, where only 4 out of 10 have chosen a paid streaming subscription over an advertising-based one, says Martinsen.
No one watches more film and video streaming services than Norwegians. 92 percent of us use such a service, and we are also clearly the most avid users of commercial streaming services, unlike the traditional public broadcasters.
– Norwegians spend an average of almost four hours per day streaming movies and TV. This is by far the most in the Nordic region, says Martinsen.
Netflix is by far the most used film and TV streaming service in Norway, although it is used by 52 percent of Norwegians now compared to 57 percent in 2022. The second most used services are Disney + and HBO, both of which are used by 27 percent of Norwegians.
The Polaris Digital Music Survey has been conducted seven times: in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024. The survey is conducted by the Nordic copyright organizations TONO (Norway), Koda (Denmark) and Teosto (Finland). The survey has been conducted by the market research company YouGov since 2015. A total of 4,000 interviews were conducted in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway in the period 8–22 May 2024. The respondents constitute a representative sample of the population in each of the four countries, aged 12–65.
TONO was founded in 1928 and is a non-profit cooperative owned and managed by authors (composers and lyricists) and music publishers, and on their behalf manages the economic copyrights in the music they have created. TONO grants permission for the use of protected music, for example on radio, TV, the internet, concerts and cinemas for a fee, and transfers its financial results each year to the rights holders in music that has been played publicly. TONO has more than 42,000 members in Norway, but also works for millions of authors and music publishers from around the world. TONO gives music creators an economic basis to be able to create new music, and collects and simplifies the licensing of protected music to music users. TONO had a turnover of NOK 997,9 million in 2023.
Willy Martinsen, Communications Director at TONO, willy.martinsen@tono.no; Tel. +47,909 65,254