BPN 1594: Digital entertainment market in the Netherlands improves

The Dutch entertainment association (NVPI) has published figures on the entertainment industry in the Netherlands. It concludes that consumption of music, television series, movies and games was higher than ever in 2011. However, as the average price for digital products is lower than those for physical CDs and DVDs, the total turnover was lower. Expectations for 2012 are positive, but the fight against piracy is still needed.

Music. Physical music products turned over 180.2 million euro, which is 10,3 per cent less than in 2011. Downloads scored 25 million euro. Downloads and streaming make up for 15 per cent of the total turnover of the music products sector; this is low in comparison to the US with 50 per cent and worldwide 32 per cent.

Audio-visual content. The physical market for products as movies and television series slowed down with 8 per cent. The slowdown can be blamed on the price lowering. However the digital market of video-on-demand is rising fast. In 2011 the turnover is estimated on 53 million euro, a rise from 2010, when the turnover was estimated to be 35 million euro.

Games en interactieve software. The turnover of games is estimated 28 million euro, which means a drop of 24 million euro in comparison to the year before. These games are sold through networks like Xbox Live, Playstation Network and PC portals like Steam. New is the sale of games for tablets, smartphones and social networks. No concrete figures of these are available. It is observed that these games are lower in price than the console games, but their consumption is larger.

NVPI expects that the turnover of digital distribution will increase, but will not be able to compensate the sales of the physical products.

Figures for 2011

Source: Dutch language press release by the NVPI on 23 February 2012

BPN 1025 EU: safer internet for children at 55 mln euro

Last week the EC announced an even safer internet programme for 2009 till 2013. In the past weeks we have been able to see on the national levels several expressions of the present programme running from 2005 till 2009.

In the Netherlands the awareness club Digibewust published a pdf downloadable brochure for the family on how to handle internet dangers. The brochure is cooperation between government and business as Liberty/UPC sponsored the publication. The brochure got straight away flack. It was not because of the brochure itself, which has been a co-production between countries. And you can see that. It is a black colour film production. In the brochure only the text has been translated, while almost all the illustration have been left in tact, this is in English. No adaptation or translation. Even an exercise in SMS lingo has not been translated or adapted; this while there is at least one SMS dictionary in Dutch. Yet the spokesperson for the awareness club characterised the brochure as successful and a real European product. I beg to disagree with the lady: if European means that we are not going to adapt and translate colour film illustration because of the costs, give us national products and you can not call a brochure successful without a survey measuring the effects. I think more effort should be put into producing such a brochure.

But the brochure got real flack as it had been merely translated in Dutch and not adapted to the legislation. As for downloading the brochure states that downloading is forbidden. In the Netherlands downloading is still not forbidden. Of course music companies and lobbies like NVPI would love to see it. However, present legislation still allows people to make and save a copy at home. Selling copies commercially and uploading music or movies is forbidden in the Netherlands. The spokesperson has granted the mistake in the meantime; however the awareness club will not change the brochure, but will add a note (which has not been added up to this day of writing).

I am not sure whether this brochure will be very successful. I was more impressed by the Belgian game Become Webwise, in French and Dutch. The game is available on the 100 per cent safe site Kid City (supported by the local telecom incumbent Belgacom). Kid City cooperates in this game with Action Innocence. Aim of this project is to contribute to integrity and dignity of children on internet. The game challenges kids and parents about their knowledge of internet. The objective of the game is to get kids and parents to talk about the positive and negative sides of internet. The game has a back-up by way of help desk for children.

Blog Posting Number: 1025

Tags: safe internet

BPN 1016 Dutch entertainment market stats for 2007

Every year he Dutch association for producers and importers of image and sound carriers (NVPI) publishes stats on DVD, music and game carriers (the categories in the document are in Dutch, but they can easily be translated). The survey of carrier sales, not rent of carriers, is executed by GfK Benelux. The Dutch consumers spent in 2007 no less than 915 million euro on music, movies and games; an increase of 5 per cent. A switch in spending the money has been noticed. More money is now spent on computer games, DVD boxes and music downloads. The real growth comes from the DVDs of television series.

An average Dutch household bought in 2007 four DVDs. The total amount of DVDs totals 32,4 units, which represents a turnover of 346 million euro. This is absolutely a record for the video branch. TV series on DVD represent 25 percent of this product group.

Interesting is to notice the second generation DVD war in the home turf of Philips. In total 175.000 HD products were sold, representing 2,2 million euro. Blu-ray represented 81 percent of the HD carriers; 40.000 Blu-ray discs over against 10.000 HD-DVDs.

The music carriers have been a sector for complaints for years. But in this sector new movements are coming up. The market for music albums has been stable in the 4 quarter of 2007 for the first time in years. The downloads showed a an increase of 20 per cent. A decrease is shown in the cd singles and music DVDs. In total 91,8 million euro was spent on music products in total. It is clear that the Dutch music sector is trying to stop the revenue decrease in line with the global music industry; it did not find yet new business models to compensate for the loss.

In the games market 2007 was the year of the games consoles. No less than 400.000 more units were sold in 2007 with the knock on effect on the sales of software with 1,4 million units, a rise of 26 per cent. The market for PC games remained stable thanks to the sale of some strong titles. But the game consoles like PSP, Xbox and WII Nintendo win it from the PC games.

Blog Posting Number: 1016

Tags: music, games, television series, Blu-ray, HD-DVDmusic, games, television series, Blu-ray. HD-DVD

The music industry pie to be divided differently

A discussion is raging in the Dutch amusement industry. Last week the news service of the ISP Planet Internet published an article on the amusement industry. It recognised that the music industry is in trouble while the games industry is flourishing.

For years the music industry has lived from selling vinyl records and audio CDs. But since internet this has changed dramatically. Live performances are seen as yielding the revenues. But this is not true, according to Wouter Rutten, spokes person for the NVPI, the Dutch recording association. “Yes live performance yield more revenues, but they do not compensate the loss of revenues from carriers like audio CDs”.

He continues saying that he disagrees with the position that the role of record companies and record shops is changing and even has finished. He offers the position that live music can not survive without record companies. They are the flying wheel. They put the artists in the market, make them known to an audience, offer their music to channels and accompany them with marketing actions. Without all these efforts, less people would come to their live performances.

He supports his position with figures of the Dutch music scene. The annual turn-over of live performances in The Netherlands yields 80 million euro. This is only a small part of the half billion euro spent on amusement products every year. The entire pie of the amusement industry is about 1 billion euro. And this is already so for some years with only light fluctuations due to the economy. There are changes within this pie, but they are diverse with changes from audio CD to DVD.

Mr Rutten notes that the amount of music record shops is diminishing in The Netherlands. However he also grants that many of these music record shops evolve to multimedia shops.
He also indicates that the NVPI is less strict about down- and uploading as the Dutch piracy watchdog Brein. He makes no bones about illegal down and uploading; the NVPI is against it. But the association likes to look at the whole picture, while Brein looks at piracy specifically. NVPI even looks at legal alternatives.

He cites examples in the UK, where Prince has bundled his latest audio CD in a Sunday paper; no less than half a million copies. This was done to promote the twenty concerts to be given later on. Rutten is not sure that this type of economic models will make it in the future. He is convinced that these models will also reach The Netherlands. But this will not be the only model or method of sharing revenues. Prince had first to get popular, a task for the record company.

Blog Posting Number 870

Tags: music industry, amusement industry