Around eight million music fans from the Nordic countries are using streaming sites like Spotify or Wimp on a regular basis, according to a recent study by Polaris Nordic.
Just on its own, Spotify is thought to have about seven million regular users in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, which is a considerable portion of the site’s 40 million active global monthly users.
The study showed that 78 per cent of internet users between the ages of 15 and 65 in the Nordics are digital music consumers who have used services including Spotify, iTunes, YouTube or Wimp at some point during the past year to access music content.
While the majority of these services have a free option, some 20 per cent of those surveyed have paid to access digital music during the past 12 months.
Consumers from all four of the countries surveyed said the amount of local music on offer was one reason why streaming was so popular, while a third said finding local music on the digital music services was easy.
More than half of the respondents said they would consider it difficult or impossible to stop listening to music as it was such an important part of their life.
The Polaris Nordic Digital Music Survey was carried out in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland in June this year. The online questionnaire targeted 1,000 users in each of the countries between the ages of 15 and 65.