Chronic. Good news, the music is getting better. If on stage the return to normal is still not completely there, with still cancellations of concerts and staggered tours because of the Covid-19, in stores and on streaming platforms, the artists find voice. Even the CD benefits from a nice revival of form. Figures from the National Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing (SNEP), published on Tuesday March 15, bear witness to this early spring, with a 14% increase in the recorded music market in 2021, the first double-digit since 2002. and the long purgatory linked to piracy and the decline of physical media. A shared upturn, with the British and German music industry also recording solid growth.
Some 22 million French people now listen to streaming music, mostly through paid subscriptions. Unsurprisingly, rap and urban music remain the most popular genres. A constant, year after year. We know the reasons for this: rap artists are acclaimed by 10-20 year olds, the very people who use platforms like Spotify, Deezer, YouTube or TikTok the most and who play songs on a loop in their headphones. Basic, but not so simple. Because the loop has nothing totally virtuous about it. On the contrary, it raises a number of questions, ranging from the distribution of rights… to piracy, via the diversity of music featured on listening sites. And shows in passing how changes in cultural practices and their appropriation according to age sometimes profoundly modify the face of a sector.
The temptation to inflate the numbers
In a study unveiled in January, the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom, the new CSA) took up the subject, criticizing what it considers to be a lack of diversity detrimental to the entire sector. “Ten percent of the most listened to titles concentrate up to 60% of listening”, thus notes the Arcom. A stone in the garden of music producers, who fear seeing streaming regulated like radio, with its share of quotas supposed to ensure musical pluralism on the airwaves. In our columns, the boss of SNEP does not want to hear about what he would consider as censorship. With 73% of rap tracks listened to on Apple Music in France and only 2% of French variety, however, we understand the need – at least the general philosophy – to promote a rebalancing of listening on the platforms.
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