2023-04-22 20:19:39
The report was awaited with interest and apprehension by the various players in the music industry… and its proposal for a “streaming tax” is far from making everyone agree. Between supporters who see it as a fundraising track “realistic” and opponents who denounce ” deadlock “the world of music appears divided again.
While Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had entrusted her with this task in October 2022, Senator Julien Bargeton (RDPI, ex-LRM) delivered his recommendations for financing the National Music Center (CNM), Thursday, April 20, to the Minister of the Rima Abdul Malak culture. The organization born in January 2020, a « maison » similar to the National Center for Cinematography and the Moving Image (CNC) for the cinema, in particular distributes aid to the sector. Its initially planned budget was around 50 million euros per year – soared to 190, even 194.1 million during the Covid-19 crisis -, but the end of the “whatever it takes” and the decline in attendance at performance halls called for a review of its funding.
For this, Senator Bargeton calls for the creation of a new tax of 1.75% on income from paid and free music streaming financed by advertising, estimating that “this segment (is) both dominant (61% of revenues in 2022) and the most buoyant (+13% in 2022 compared to 2021)”. As Netflix and Disney + must now invest in the 7th French art, the hypothesis of a taxation of musical platforms was less and less taboo. But this suggestion, which could bring in 20 million euros per year, brings back fractures in the sector.
A streaming tax?
On the one hand, music producers, through the National Union of Phonographic Publishing (SNEP), and streaming platforms (Spotify, Deezer), consider that they are doubly losers when they are already contributors. “With a full rate VAT and despite a lower turnover, recorded music already contributes 170 million euros more to the State budget than live performance at the height of its contributory capacity”, denounces the main union of record companies and distributors in its press release published on Friday, April 21. According to Alexandre Lasch, the director general of SNEP, the report does not establish the needs of the CNM and is mistaken in the diagnosis that it establishes, basing its recommendations on an erroneous analysis of the current dynamics of streaming”.
Ludovic Pouilly, vice-president of Deezer and president of the union of online music service publishers (ESML), is also “deeply disappointed” estimating that “the new tax will play into the hands of GAFA, especially Apple, YouTube and Amazon”. Also, while the Chinese social network TikTok is now essential for the music industry, but largely escapes its funding, “the fact that the report barely mentions its existence is worrying for the understanding of the mechanisms at work”note M. Lasch, you SNEP. « It’s mind-blowing to risk weakening ourselves while advocating cultural and digital sovereignty.”rebounds Mr. Pouilly.
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