Russians eager to purchase legal mp3 only for mobile phones

The turnover of digital music content in Russia totals $38,4m in 2006, including $37,7m sales of ringtones and realtones. With this figure cellular networks perform about one third of total legal music sales in Russia, according to recent Intermedia report. Online music stores managed to gain only $193,500 selling legal content (Intermedia estimations based on rightholders' reports). Although the piracy level is still high on Russian web, experts admit that legal music market has been eastablished. "Two years ago the market didn't exist at all. A dozen of legal stores appeared only in 2006, they sell content directly from rightholders or legal distributors", - says Igor Pozhitkov from IFPI Russian office. Andrey Lukinov from Real Records expects the legal sales would reach 40-50% of total online music stores turnover this year.