Senator Julien Bargeton submitted a report a few days ago proposing to tax music streaming platforms in order to finance the National Music Center.
After six months of working on ways to fund the National Music Center, a group of senators released a report advocating taxing music majors and music streaming platforms at 1.75%. Barely formalized, the CNM has mainly supported French musicians, laid off by the Covid-19 crisis. And three years after its creation, the state authority has still not tackled its primary task, which is to promote andsupport the creation of contemporary French works.
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In his report, Me Bargeton affirms that the CNM “must now deploy fully to enable it to fulfill its vocation of bringing together the music sector, from live performance to recorded music”. According to him, it is about “French cultural sovereignty”. We must dip into the pockets of Spotify, Apple Music and other Deezers to bail out a music sector disrupted by streaming and the Covid crisis.
Spotify and Apple Music should be taxed at 1.75% according to this Senate report
For the senator from Paris, this “new financing lever responds to a principle of solidarity and redistribution within the sector”. Obviously, if the production houses and the independent artists are delighted with such a scenario, the leaders of the broadcast platforms vehemently oppose it.
According to the newspaper The echoes, “The CNM could recover 20 million additional resources from paid and free streaming and 6 million from the contribution of classical music”. The principle of applying a streaming tax of 1.75% is far from being endorsed at the executive level. If this financial windfall would do the industry a lot of good, there is no doubt that streaming services will increase the price of their subscriptions. And as often, consumers will likely have to pay the difference.
