A new report from Statistics Iceland shows that up to 90% of the sales value of recorded music in Iceland came through Spotify in 2019. This number has been slowly increasing over the past four years.
The total value of CDs, records and digital documents sold in 2019 was ISK 802 million. The vast majority of these sales took place digitally and amounted to a total of ISK 713 million.
Physical copies of files amounted to only ISK 88 million.
Photo result – Statistics Iceland
Although sales have increased through music providers such as Spotify, they are much lower than when they peaked in 1999.
According to Statistics Iceland, 98% of the streaming music all came through Spotify.
Will physical records ever come back?
In 2018, the managing director of IFPI Iceland, Eiður Arnarsson, believed that Icelanders had begun to buy more physical copies of Icelandic music.
When talking to RÚV, he said that vinyl sales have changed recently and many libraries around the capital area have been lending records to people. He believes that easy access to physical files will lead to increased physical sales.
Spotify takes over.
Spotify came to Iceland in 2013 and has since been the most popular way to stream music in many countries.
Eiður says that many Icelandic musicians now enjoy significant income from streams on the platform. This is because of the unrestricted access that Spotify provides and also because the streaming service does a good job of introducing new music to a large audience.
Source: The Nordic Page