SPOTIFY NOW ACCOUNTS FOR 42% OF ALL RECORD LABEL INCOME IN SWEDEN

One of the many reasons I like Spotify and MOG so much are that they present a legal alternative to piracy. Why bother to spend time seeking out and illegally downloading files of varying origin and quality when, for a monthly fee that’s less than the price of one beer at a bar, you can find anything you want in good quality in a matter of seconds, do it legally, and do so in a manner in which the artists actually get paid? Sure, I lauded the pulldown of Megaupload because those fuckers earned $110 million in ad revenue on the backs of pirated content, but only one mole has been whacked and the piracy problem still looms large: Spotify is a solution.

But so far it’s been hard for content owners to claim that Spotify is a legitimate source of revenue; until now.

According to an article released in Sweden (translated with the help of Google), revenues from streaming services (read: Spotify) grew 105% in 2011 to 349 million Krona, or $51.3 million. That’s 42% of Swedish record labels’ overall revenue of 829 million Krona ($122 million). 9% of overall revenues came from digital downloads, 46% from CD sales, and the remaining 3% from other sources (presumably vinyl).

Holy shit, that’s some good news! Spotify is a Swedish company so it makes sense that the Swedish people would be quick to embrace the service. But even I’m surprised that the company is churning out so much money to music content owners in only a little over 3 years, nearly surpassing the CD (which will surely happen in 2012). Hopefully studies like the above will prove to the American naysayers that Spotify can, in fact, be a legitimate source of revenue in addition to being a piracy killer, and that Spotify will make good on their promise to increase per-stream payout rates as the service gains traction. It also shows that it can all happen sooner than anyone thinks.

-VN

Thanks: Erik Bäckwall