No Quebec song in French is currently in the ranking of the 100 most listened to titles in Quebec. Catastrophic figures which surprise the music industry here, which says it does not observe this disinterest in the field at all. In the main festivals, it is ensured that Quebec music in French is always popular on stage. Faced with such a gloomy portrait, does the musical milieu lie in the sand?
The programming director of the Festival d’été de Québec (FEQ), Louis Bellavance, is more of the opinion that “the streaming does not do everything”. He is certainly concerned about the figures obtained by The duty, which reveal that barely 23 Quebec titles in French were among the 1000 most listened to songs in Quebec in the second week of June. But Louis Bellavance still calls on us to exercise caution before concluding that Quebec music is in danger.
” THE streaming, it’s something we look more for international artists when programming them. For Quebecers, it is much less important. We already know our artists; we know what works on stage. Pirate Heart may not generate a lot of streaming on the platforms right now, but we know very well that people know her songs and that there will be a lot of people coming to see her in concert,” explains the FEQ programmer.
It’s much more difficult for a young artist starting out today than it was during the golden age of the CD.
For its next edition, which begins on July 6, the FEQ is counting on several Quebec headliners who sing in French: Coeur de pirate, but also Roxane Bruneau, Les Trois Accords, Robert Charlebois and Les Cowboys Fringants. Safe bets, the festival organizers are convinced.
A music that has become eventful?
At the Francos de Montréal, whose programming is made up exclusively of French-language music, there is no lack of interest in Quebec music either, contrary to what can be observed on listening platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. On the contrary, the edition of the Francos which has just ended was exceptionally popular, underlines Maurin Auxéméry, the festival’s programming director.
“What happens on the platforms is not necessarily always representative of reality. Me, I program jazz artists who barely generate 20,000 listens per month on the platforms, but who will have no difficulty in selling 1,500 tickets in concert. It has always been like this. There are artists who had enormous success on the radio, but who could not fill their room. It’s the same today with the streaming “says Maurin Auxéméry, who also takes care of the programming of the Festival international de jazz de Montréal.
Montreal hosts one of the biggest jazz festivals in the world in July. However, the rest of the year, there is very little talk of jazz, which is mostly seen as a style of music that the general public only gives importance to once a year. Is French-speaking Quebec music also becoming a musical genre that we listen to very little at home, but which suddenly becomes unifying again during the festival period?
“It could be that we have become an event genre”, recognizes Alan Côté, the general manager of the Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée, in Gaspésie. Appalled by the listening figures on the platforms, Mr. Côté pleads for an initiation to Quebec song from primary school, at a time when music lessons have been abandoned for years.
In deep crisis
Music in Quebec has been going through difficult times for several years. Like everywhere else, album sales have plummeted, robbing artists and the rest of the industry of valuable revenue. However, even if Quebec artists were a hit on the platforms, online listening is much less lucrative than selling records. So the tours remain. If the festivals are holding up, the paid indoor concerts are filling up less well than before, attests Michel Sabourin, the founder of Club Soda, who also produced established artists like Marjo and Richard Séguin in the 1990s.
“It’s much more difficult for a young artist starting out today than it was during the golden age of the CD. With Richard Séguin, we could fill the Spectrum seven or eight nights in a row. Who’s doing this today? If Pierre Lapointe does that one evening, it will be beautiful, ”illustrates Mr. Sabourin, who has just sold his legendary performance hall to businessman Louis-Armand Bombardier.
Gap between industry and public
Obviously, the opening of theaters in the suburbs is not unrelated to the drop in ticket sales in Montreal. But this is not the only factor involved. Music radio stations no longer have the firepower they once had to publicize new artists or new releases from established artists. And for good reason: several French songs that are currently on the charts of radio stations like CKOI and WKND in Montreal do not even appear in the ranking of the 1000 most listened to songs in Quebec on the platforms.
“I think that in Quebec, we are world champions in trying to create from scratch a buzz around an artist. But the important thing is that the public embarks. Sometimes it works; other times, no,” says Rafael Pérez, president of Coyote Records.
On listening platforms, several up-and-coming artists, who enjoy significant media visibility, are doing less well than some veterans who haven’t released a new album for years. In the United States and France, however, the artists of the hour generally perform better than the legends of music: logical, because their audience is younger, and therefore more likely to use these platforms. Why this Quebec specificity? Was the music here better before