22 years ago, I got my first job in the recording industry, at Audiogram. At that time, the industry looked like a nice big family where the competition was all in all fair. And if there were issues of working relations between record producers and artists, it was not a common thing, let alone public. After all, the collective agreements between the Quebec Association of the Record, Show and Video Industry (ADISQ) and the Union des artistes (UDA) / Guilde des musicians et musiciennes (Guilde) were brand new.
In 1999, the money was flowing. Record sales were at their peak. The industry had just (re) sold the same catalog to consumers for a third time. After vinyl: in eight-track cartridge, cassette and compact disc. This latter digital format was king. The Archambault, Renaud-Bray and HMV of this world were doing great business. MusiquePlus, the mainstream media and cultural columnists were all-powerful.
Then came Napster. And this innovative idea of exchanging MP3 files, peer-to-peer.
Like a plane rushing over the skyscraper of the music industry, it had a shattering, destabilizing impact that triggered the long fall of the content economy.
Every technological advance brings threats; of course, it also brings its share of opportunities. You just have to open your eyes and ears. And before the others, preferably.
Usually, the natural reflex of an industry is to fight against technology to preserve its gains. And that’s what the music industry here had chosen to tackle with file sharing: protecting its business model based on the sale of content. ADISQ has carried out major legal quests in order, on the one hand, to try to preserve the revenues of its industry and, on the other hand, to ensure that its expenses are kept to a minimum… with artisans and creators.
An understandable reflex. But debatable. Especially from the point of view of music artists, whose minimum income has not been indexed to the cost of living for the last century. Many of them today must have a side job in order to make ends meet.
Because time is money …
For 10 years, ADISQ has been negotiating with UDA and the Guild to renew sound recording agreements, which expired in 2000 and 1998 respectively. These agreements govern the minimum rates for hiring musicians and singers in the studio. Minimum tariffs still respected to the letter by some producers, who do not see the point of falling into the voluntary subsidy.
And while the cost of the basket of groceries and the “little three and a half too expensive, fret in winter” (dixit Mes Aïeux) has increased visibly, the ADISQ, the UDA and the Guild they were negotiating.
Until we learned on November 25 in the radio show of Pénélope McQuade on ICI Première1 that ADISQ would have ceased the current negotiations. This statement (to this day not denied by ADISQ) was launched by the flamboyant Philémon Cimon, whose most recent and vibrant speech on Instagram is one among others in recent months. In fact, a hundred self-produced artists – now in the majority in the production landscape – denounced certain problems in the allocation of subsidies last June.
So let’s hope that the redesign of the Status Act‘artist ongoing on the side of Minister Nathalie Roy will (finally) see the light of day and (finally) impose on these three industrial poles the flagellating obligation to go and finish their interminable negotiations before an enlightened arbitrator or an administrative tribunal …
It’s the start of a new era …
The good news is that we are currently witnessing a profound change of guard at the very heart of this industry. Last September, Eve Paré took up her post as the new Executive Director of ADISQ. In her remarkable journey, she has already sat down with Airbnb, when she was defending the hotel industry in Greater Montreal. This collaboration – with the sworn enemy – quickly led to better tax fairness in Quebec, in terms of tourist accommodation. Morality ? When you quickly target what you can’t agree on, you can easily focus on the rest, as a team.
In addition, Mme Paré recently co-signed an open letter in Press, with Jérôme Payette, Director General of the Association of Music Industry Professionals (APEM).2 Let us mention that the APEM is one of the offspring of ADISQ. This association came into being in 2002, when some publishers who were members of ADISQ chose to slam the door, not feeling adequately represented.
In short, I applaud the arrival of this vision of openness and collaboration at the heart of ADISQ. It gives me hope. I have strong reasons to believe that with this new general management, visibly seeking to create bridges, our future industrial developments will be guided by good faith and the search for consensus.
And it happens at the right time. Since the current wave of public denunciation of artists and self-producers is after all a reaction to an old way of doing things, often antagonistic, which seems to be running out of steam.
What awaits us straight ahead risks being very constructive. Particularly if Nathalie Roy succeeds in getting her Status of the Artist Act, before the next provincial elections.
The future may be less frozen. In any case, we can give ourselves the right to believe it.