France’s Senate – the upper house of its parliament – has been working on the country’s financial budget for 2024. An amendment voted through on the bill this week has roused the ire of music industry body SNEP.
Why? SNEP said that the amendment “créant une nouvelle taxe sur le streaming pour financer le Centre national de la musique” (creates a new tax on streaming to finance the Centre Nationale de la Musique – the entity that conducts research, oversees aid schemes and tax credits relating to music in France).
SNEP criticised the politicians voting for the amendment, saying that it (our translation) “renounces the principles it has always defended: reducing production taxes and refusing to create new taxes”.
The body also said that the amendment “attacks the musical uses most popular with younger generations” and “sabotages the attractiveness of the market and the capacity of European platforms to invest in the promotion and support of French artists”.
Separately, SNEP has also joined a coalition of creative-industry organisations in putting forward their desired regulations in the European Union’s upcoming AI Act, which is currently being negotiated between the EU’s key political institutions.
“Transparency is a prerequisite, not a hindrance,” claimed the bodies. “This transparency is part of the developers’ DNA: the argument that this would be a technical obstacle or a disproportionate burden is not credible.”
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