Belgians shun ‘pay-to-download’ music

7 April 2005

BRUSSELS –  Belgians are still reluctant to pay for downloading tunes from the Internet as long as they can get away with doing it illegally for free, it was reported Thursday.

Marcel Heymans, director of the IFPI music industry association’s Belgian branch, told the daily business newspaper l’Echo that paid-for music downloads for the web are simply not taking off here.

On a global level, some 90 percent of music downloads are illegal, whereas in Belgium the figure is close to 100 percent.

According to Heymans, just under 250,000 songs were legally downloaded from Belgian music sites in 2004.

While the number is a 500 percent increase over the previous year, it still represents only 0.1 percent of total sales.

At the global level, the average of legally downloaded songs is still only 1.5 percent, as music piracy remains very much ‘in vogue’.

In 2004 alone IFPI sent some 200 letters to unscrupulous Belgian internet surfers.

The Music-Club platform run by Skynet, MSN and Tiscali disputed the claim by IFPI, arguing that its figures are “drastically erroneous”.

[Copyright Expatica 2005]

Subject: Belgian news