Music streaming services - including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music - have made a submission to the National Assembly of Canadian province Québec to raise concerns about proposed new laws that seek to ensure French language content is prioritised by digital platforms operating in the province.
They are responding to Bill 109 - “an act to affirm the cultural sovereignty of Québec” - which was introduced in the National Assembly earlier this year.
The act would “enshrine the right to discoverability of and access to original French language cultural content” into Québec's Charter Of Human Rights And Freedoms, and would allow the province’s government to dictate “the quantity or proportion of original French-language cultural content that must be offered by digital platforms”.
Needless to say, the streaming services don’t want any new discoverability requirements and French language quotas forced upon them.
According to Graham Davies, CEO of the digital music companies' US trade body DiMA, “Québec artists and Francophone music are thriving on streaming services today because audiences are empowered to find and listen to music organically”. The streaming services believe, he adds, that “the most effective path forward is one focused on listener choice, not constraint”.
DiMA is already campaigning against new Canada-wide regulations for digital platforms, which seek to ensure the discoverability of Canadian content on streaming services more generally, while also introducing a levy on streaming subscriptions that would be used to finance funding schemes for Canadian musicians and radio programme producers.
But within Canada, Québec often has its own political agenda going on - more so than ever at the moment - and championing the French language and specifically Québec culture is often a priority. Hence Bill 109.
In a summary of those proposals earlier this year, law firm Osler explained that “the act will give the government the power to pass regulations establishing ‘the quantity or proportion of original French-language cultural content or of content available in a French version’ which digital platforms must offer”.
And, “the act will give the government the power to pass regulations establishing digital platforms’ obligations with respect to discoverability of original French-language cultural content or of content available in a French version, and in particular obligations regarding content recommendation, promotion or display”.
In its submission to the Committee On Culture And Education in the Québec National Assembly, DiMA writes, “mandating quotas and the discoverability of certain tracks or types of tracks risks altering the business model that has made streaming so attractive and has delivered vital revenues to artists and the music industry”.
“If the government intervenes in what choices the streaming consumer makes”, it then explains, it will “change how services operate, limit the availability of songs and listener choice, and degrade the user experience”. Together that might “reduce consumers’ willingness to pay and thereby limit the flow of revenue to Francophone artists and rightsholders”.
In addition to concerns about the impact the proposals might have on user experience within the music streaming platforms, DiMA also raises logistical issues.
For example, for a streaming service to identify and prioritise certain artists or tracks, there would need to be an industry agreement on what “counts as Québécois or French-language” content, and platforms would rely on labels and distributors to correctly identify such music.
Plus, how would rules apply in a world where artists frequently collaborate beyond borders? “A singer from Québec might work with Canadian, British and Australian songwriters, an American producer, and release the recording through a European label”, DiMA writes. “In such cases, rigid definitions of nationality quickly become unworkable”.
At the same time, DiMA is keen to stress that it supports the Québec government’s ultimate objective to promote the language and culture of the province.
It runs through ways that various streaming services already do that, before adding that DiMA's members hope to “encourage the establishment of policies that build on the support streaming currently provides to Québec artists and further increase the engagement of streaming customers in Québec”.
Zut alors!