The entertainment industry in The Netherlands had to deal with a significant blow, last year. After a decrease of 7% in 2009, sales have plummeted in 2010, resulting in 12% lower turnovers. The Dutch association for producers and importers of image and sound carriers (NVPI) reports that this downward trend applies to the music, the film and the computer games sector.

NVPI noticed that Dutch consumers purchase fewer music and DVDs. Last year we bought fifteen million albums, two million less than the previous year. For the first time in years, the same trend applies to the sale of computer games. NVPI also reported improvement in the area of paid music downloads, an increase from 300,000 to 1.2 million, but this is not enough to compensate losses. This development shows that the entertainment industry needs more time than expected to make the transition from traditional physical products to digital and mobile services.

Moreover, it seems that new digital services that are offered in the field of music, film and television are less popular in The Netherlands than in other countries. NVPI suggests that the lack of a ban on downloading is the key source of the problem. The Dutch music industry gets 5.7% of its revenues from online music sales, while in the U.S. this percentage is 43. The entertainment lobby association warns that these latest figures indicate that it is still important to curb the dissemination of music via illegal channels (for example torrents).

Sales figures for films and related products have been deteriorating for the past four years and they are not recovering. NVPI thinks the relaxed attitude towards downloading in The Netherlands contributes to this collapse significantly. In addition, new innovations, such as the Blu-ray system, seem to perform below expectations. In 2010, 1.5 million units were sold in The Netherlansds, compared to over fifteen times as many DVDs. The difference in picture quality is not enough for consumers to pay more for this new technology - a movie on Blu-ray is sometimes three times more expensive as the same movie on DVD.

For years, games were the only growth market in the entertainment industry, but this came to an end last year: sales dropped ten percent. In this area, the industry is hopeful of recovery, though. New introductions like the Xbox Kinect and PlayStation Move are likely to bring in some money. Moreover, 'casual games', small games that can be played via the internet or on smartphone are on the rise. This segment was not included in the 2010 figures.

Source: NVPI