A new report from Statistics Iceland shows that up to 90% of sales value of recorded music in Iceland came through Spotify in 2019. This figure has slowly been on the rise for the past four years.
The total value of CD’s, records and digital files sold in 2019 was 802 million ISK. The vast majority of these sales were made digitally, making a total of 713 million ISK.
Physical copies of records only amounted to 88 million ISK.
Statistics Iceland
Although sales value has increased through music providers such as Spotify, they are much lower than at their peak in 1999.
According to Statistics Iceland, 98% of streamed music all came through Spotify.
Will physical records ever make a comeback?
In 2018, the director of IFPI Iceland, Eiður Arnarsson, believed that Icelanders were beginning to buy more physical copies of Icelandic music.
When speaking with RÚV, he said vinyl sales have turned around recently and many libraries across the capital area have been loaning out records for people. He believes that the ease in access for physical records will lead to an increase of physical sales.
Spotify taking over.
Spotify arrived in Iceland during 2013 and has since been the most popular way to stream music across many countries.
Eiður says many Icelandic musicians now enjoy significant income from streams on the platform. This is due to the unrestrained access that Spotify allows for and also because the streaming service does a good job of promoting new music to a vast audience of people.
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