Belgium’s music and homevid market grew across the board in 2006, according to stats released Thursday by the country’s Intl. Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Belgian Video Federation.
Belgian spending on music, video and videogames grew 6.5% in 2006 to e584 million ($760 million).
The market for music downloads rose 44.2% to $12.2 million. In total, Belgians downloaded more than 1.5 million cell-phone ringtones and 3.4 million songs. Ringtones represented 56.38% of the download market, mainly because they cost three to four times more than a single download, the report said.
Spending on DVDs grew by 6.9% to $285 million. Demand for TV series on DVD outpaced the rest of the market, growing by 33.1%. “Lost” was the top-selling series last year.
Sales of vidgames rose 10.1%. The most popular game was the soccer simulation contest “FIFA 2007.”
