Well-known musicians Petr Hapka and Michal Horáček were looking for a hit with their latest effort: Strážce plamene (The Flametender). But the Czech music industry had experienced a sea change during the pair's four-year recording hiatus. An increasing number of people were now downloading music illegally, and album sales for Czech artists were slumping heavily.

Rather than fight the shift, Hapka and Horáček decided to embrace it. The Flametender became the first new Czech album to become available for legal download on the Internet for 249 Kč ($11), a full week before it hit stores.

"We just wanted to target as many people as possible," Horáček said. "So we agreed to post our new album online."

The album is the first release from the newly opened www.i-legalne.cz portal, which began offering legal music downloads Nov. 14. Its sole competitor, allmusic.cz, launched a few days earlier. Popular music downloading sites such as Apple's iTunes don't accept payments from the Czech Republic, effectively barring Czechs from downloading music from those sites.

"The situation here was quite bizarre," said Petra Žikovská, director for the Czech branch of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI). "People had a chance to legally purchase iPods, but there was no legal way to download digital music."

The founders of the two sites said they were following the global trend: downloading sites gaining popularity over traditional brick-and-mortar music stores.

"We simply could not ignore the invasion of digital music," said Josef Suchánek, director of Vltava Stores, which launched www.allmusic.cz.

The two new companies are hoping to drastically change the music industry in the country.

"This should enhance the entire Czech music industry," said Petr Peřina, marketing director of DVC International, which owns www.i-legalne.cz. "It will be about music, for music fans and also for the actual musicians."

No more excuses

Until now, the only access Czechs had to digital music was through piracy or using software to convert songs from their compact discs to digital forms. About 40 percent of all music in the Czech Republic is pirated, Žikovská said.

Revenues from authorship rights have fallen 30 percent, simply due to illegal music downloads, said Jana Bärová, chairwoman of the board at the Copyright Protection Union (OSA). The launch of legal music downloading would reduce the level of piracy in this country, she said.

Exclusive offers such as The Flametender are expected to nurse that expansion.

"We hope that fans who until recently used to download music illegally and claimed that there was no other way to get to digital music will now turn to a legal, fast and safe way of downloading music," Peřina said.

Those fans will have a wider selection to chose from than a few of Karel Gott's greatest hits. Major music publishers EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music agreed to supply records to www.i-legalne.cz.

The site started with 200,000 records available for download, but that amount should grow to 400,000 over the next two months. It plans to provide up to 2.5 million songs of all genres, and will launch an online music magazine.

More to come

The Czech music industry continued its decline in the first half of the year, but growing sales of digital recordings slowed that fall considerably.

Total sales of Czech recording companies have dropped 3.2 percent year on year to 201.7 million Kč.

Sales peaked in 1997, reaching 1.64 billion Kč. But with the advent of illegal downloading, revenues fell to 665 million Kč in 2004, and 556 million Kč last year, even as CD prices fell.

Meanwhile, sales from basic digital products — mainly in the form of mobile phone ring tones — grew more than 400 percent. Recording companies received almost 10 million Kč from such sales in the first half of this year, up from less than 2 million Kč a year earlier.

The launch of the new music portals will further push the decline in CD prices, market analysts predict.

"We want to offer our records at lower prices than what's been charged in regular shops," DVC International's Peřina said.

Both www.i-legalne.cz and www.allmusic.cz offer downloadable songs for 15-40 Kč, depending on the popularity of the song.

Despite the increasing price competition, however, digital music is not likely to close down traditional music stores anytime soon.

"Regular shops will still dominate in the years to come," Žikovská said, adding that she expects the share of digital music on overall sales to grow from the current 3 percent to 5 percent.

Digital music in the United States accounts for 18 percent of total sales; it's about 10 percent in Western Europe.

The new portals will not attract people en masse, but rather those who prefer high quality and comfort regardless of price, especially fans of marginal genres, said Petr Bártek, an economist at Cyrrus company.

The new sites will need some time to take hold, said Tomáš Filip, director of the Czech branch of Universal Music publisher.