The report – entitled "What now – The influence of digitalisation on the Norwegian music industry" – was handed over to the Minister for Culture, Trine Skei Grande, on Thursday.
"This is pioneering academic work, which we gladly support. The music industry was digitalised quite early in Norway, and all of Scandinavia has been at the forefront of digitalisation because we are a technological population. The music industry is now experiencing the consequences of digitalisation," the Minister said during the presentation at BI.
Skei Grande emphasised that digitalisation is now a reality the music industry cannot do without, and this report is a step in the right direction in establishing a new policy for digitalising our daily lives.
"We cannot put the genie back in the bottle; nobody is going to be buying CDs again," the head of the Norwegian Liberal Party said.
Sales of Norwegian music are falling
One of the main goals of the report, according to Associate Professor Irina Eidsvold-Tøien who led the study, was to map out the music industry and look at how digitalisation has influenced the sector's value system, market structures and competitive situation – and to look at how economic values are created and distributed among the various operators in the sector.
One of the main findings in the report is that, even though the music market as a whole in Norway has seen good growth since 2011, Norwegian musicians and rightsholders have been experiencing difficult times. The market has grown from five to 7.6 billion in that period, while the share of sales of Norwegian music has fallen from 39 to 33 percent, for which digital streaming services get much of the blame.
"Four out of ten Norwegians use streaming services as their first choice when listening to music. The share of earnings for played Norwegian music fell in 2009, just after Spotify was launched. Income to creators, performers and record companies now amount to a lesser share of all earnings in the music market than before," Eisdvold-Tøien said during the presentation.