Finnish music sells worse in digital stores than in traditional shops

The Finnish music market‘s share is smaller in digital music stores than in traditional music shops. According to sales and consumption statistics, non-Finnish artists‘ share of all sold music grows when people buy music from the web and mobile stores instead of traditional record stores. The observation was published in a report on the recent trends in music consumption in Finland. The report was made by Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT.

The market share of local music in Finland has traditionally been very important. In 2009, four out of five traditional music store Top 20 albums consist of music made in Finland. At the same time, half of the music in the Finnish download Top 20 are imports. Music sales in Finland diminished 13.4% in 2009 compared to the previous year.

- Partly the reason is that people of different ages are buying music from different sources. Partly the difference is caused by digital music stores not promoting Finnish music as strongly as the traditional record stores. In the user interfaces of the web music stores Finnish music is not prioritised, says Lassi Liikkanen, researcher from HIIT.

According to the report, YouTube has become a remarkable channel for delivering Finnish music. The view numbers of YouTube exceed the numbers of pieces of Finnish music sold in digital stores. Most popular Finnish music videos have been viewed millions of times. For instance, Nightwish has been viewed over 100 million times on YouTube. However, success on YouTube does not automatically mean that the same music would be commercially successful.

Helsinki Insititute for Information Technology HIIT is a joint research organisation of Aalto University and the University of Helsinki for basic and applied research on information technology. The report was made in the Musiquitous research project funded by the Academy of Finland.

Report: http://musiq.fi/publications

More information:
Lassi A. Liikkanen, reseacher, PhD
lassi.liikkanen --- hiit.fi
Tel. +358 50 384 1508