Don’t tell people what you do,” Per Sundin’s wife insisted as they went to a dinner party several years ago. Sundin wasn’t a banker, used-car salesman or weapons producer, but the head of a record label in Sweden. Back then, being a music industry boss in the Nordic country was a miserable job. Sales had more than halved between 2000 and 2008 as illegal downloading took over. Sundin, who has headed a record label since 1998, was known by international colleagues as the expert on The Pirate Bay, an infamous Swedish website used to illegally download the latest music and films.
Today Sundin, now head of Universal Music in Sweden, is that rarest of things: a happy music executive. No longer shunned by colleagues, he is the company expert on something more attractive: Spotify. “Sweden has gone from being worst in the class to the best in five years. We were so down the drain when Spotify came and presented their idea. Today, Spotify is the majority of the success we have,” he says.
Sundin’s happiness is mirrored by much of the music industry in Sweden. Music sales have increased by more than a quarter from their nadir in 2008 and Sweden has become one of the first countries in the world where streaming services – listening to music over the internet without owning it – make more money for the industry than CDs or downloads. Almost three-quarters of the SKr990m (£86m) made last year came from streaming.