Hungarian Digital Music Market On The Rise

Record sales have been steadily decreasing in Hungary for years now. But the good news for the local music industry is that digital sales seem to offset the negative changes in the years to come. Hungarian music consumers don't buy as many CDs as before but they are willing to buy more and more digital music. According to figures released by Mahasz (Association Of Hungarian Record Publishers) 4.8 million CDs were sold in 2006, slightly less than in the previous year. Paid internet downloads of single tracks, however, amounted to almost 60,000 last year. (In 2005, 28,000 single track downloads were sold.) These numbers seem to be small, but there is another segment in the music market that has shown significant growth recently: the mobile music market. Hungarian consumers bought 66,000 mastertones (short snippets of music tracks) in 2005 and more than 267,000 in 2006. While there were no paid music video downloads in 2005, last year saw a very strong debut in this small segment: 8,223 music videos were downloaded onto mobile phones, generating a revenue of HUF 1.6 million. Mahasz hasn't published any figures concering the first half of 2007, but local digital music services like T.Online have reported growth for the period.
As a sign of the times, Mahasz launched the country's first official download chart in June. The singles chart has been compiled for more than a decade now but only this year saw digital-only tracks featured in the official Top 10. So far, electronic band Magashegyi Underground have been able to reach Number two on that chart with the digital-only track "Szeplős váll". Digital singles, however, still represent a small part
of the local music industry: digital tracks are struggling to reach the top ten in the singles chart because labels still release CD-singles that sell better than digital tracks. Local rock star Ákos, for example has released a physical single "Minden most kezdődik el" that topped the singles chart for weeks.
But this will soon change because digital singles seem to bring in much more cash for local artists and composers in the coming years than they have so far. According to some industry experts, the Hungarian digital music market is worth HUF 100 million now - roughly 30 million more than in 2006. And local players
seem to be able to read between the (digital music news) lines.

Attila Lukacs