25% of all DVDs sold in the Netherlands are music titles

Feature films continued to make up the lion's share of European DVD retail in 2004, but as the market matures, other genres are gradually increasing in size, according to Screen Digest. Europe's largest video market, the UK, saw movies' market share decline by around 3% points in 2004, compared with 2003. In France and Germany the trend was even more pronounced, feature films dropping 5% points in both territories. This gradual erosion of movies' dominance of DVD retail by non-film categories means that, across Western Europe, market share for feature films has fallen by 13% points since 2000.

The size of the UK, French and German markets (between them they account for around 70% of total West European DVD sales) dictates that where they lead, overall genre splits for Western Europe inevitably follow. However, this predominance disguises considerable regional variations.

In the Netherlands, for example, music titles made up a quarter of all DVD sales in 2004, up from 20% in 2003. Similarly, in Belgium the music genre accounted for 18%. In fact more music titles were sold in the Netherlands (7.3 mln) than in the UK (6.7 mln) in 2004, even though total UK DVD sales were seven times greater.