a positive vote in the Senate welcomed by unions in the music industry

The Senate voted this weekend in favor of the payment by online music platforms of a compulsory contribution to the budget of the National Music Center. French production unions welcome this vote, while the text must return to the National Assembly.

Six organizations in the French music industry welcomed the vote, on the night of Saturday November 25 to Sunday November 26, 2023, for a compulsory contribution from platforms broadcasting music online to the budget of the National Music Center.

“The Senate expressed itself in a transpartisan manner in favor of a compulsory contribution from platforms broadcasting online music to the budget of the National Music Center“(CNM), they welcome in a press release, referring to several amendments from senators to this effect voted on as part of the examination of the 2024 finance bill (PLF).

The CNM is a state and sectoral body created in 2020, which aims to support and accompany the French music industry, like the CNC for cinema. But it does not have lasting funding.

The signatories welcome “an adequate and dynamic amendment”

Among the organizations signing the press release are the Union of Independent French Phonographic Producers (UPFI), the Union of Current Music (SMA) and the National Union of Musical and Variety Entertainment PRODISS.

The device defended in the amendments “targets all platforms, paid and free, pure players and social networks”. He “offers an adequate and dynamic return, as well as an architecture based on the turnover levels of the actors concerned, capable of guaranteeing respect for the economic balance of the sector“, they emphasize.

On June 21, the day of the Music Festival, Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of a tax on “streaming” income if the music industry did not agree on new ways of financing creation, and had set September 30, 2023 as the deadline.

The six organizations call “solemnly the government to retain this system in the finance bill for 2024“. The debates in the Senate on the vote on the 2024 budget are scheduled until December 12. The text must then return to the National Assembly, where the government had activated article 49.3 of the Constitution to have it adopted without a vote in first lecture.

The platforms see it as “a new tax”

In mid-November, the Union of Online Music Service Publishers (ESML), which brings together, among others, the Deezer, Qobuz and Spotify platforms, denounced a streaming tax project as only a “new production tax” Who “would lead to a weakening of the dynamics of the recorded music market”.

The ESML saw it “losses for French artists and creators“, as well as a “increase in subscription prices for French people of at least 10%“.