Spotify starts divesting from France in response to new music-streaming tax

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/22/spotify-france-tax-festivals/

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

82 74 3 years ago

dpflan• 3 years ago

(Wu-Tang’s C.R.E.A.M. playing in the background)

“Spotify will have the means to absorb this tax, but Spotify will disinvest in France and will invest in other markets,” Monin said in an interview with FranceInfo last week. “France does not encourage innovation and investment.”

What will the CNM (Centre National de la Musique) do? Could it be encouraging “innovation and investment” in France? While Spotify loses some profit and share price, but then may have to innovate and invest in this new business environment.

timeagain• 3 years ago

“ France does not encourage innovation and investment”… in foreign media companies. They’re using the tax to fund local investment in music.

gwervc• 3 years ago

No, in general. It's a tax hell, the state is capturing about 43.5% of GDP for very questionable results on every plan (security, education, health, etc.) The money will be diverted to friends of friends that don't need it in the first place.

Source: myself, looking at starting a company there.

PaulHoule• 3 years ago

(1) The music industry? (2) Working musicians who make contemporary music people want to listen to? (3) Paying to maintain a big classical music hall that people think other people should listen to? (4) (3) only if they play Debussy instead of Bach?

indigo0086• 3 years ago

Repeat this until you understand how funny it sounds

mc32• 3 years ago

What’s deezer’s standing in all this?

LordShredda• 3 years ago

They fill in the gap spotify will leave. The french win anyways

adestefan• 3 years ago

I'm also unsure of any innovation Spotify has made in the world of music.

Some searching has led me to the end of year recaps and a lot about advertising. Guess France will miss out.

dawatchusay• 3 years ago

From my perspective they made streaming a vast catalogue of music legally a business. I’ve been a user for a long time and been able to discover a lot on their platform although I must admit quality of recommendations seems to be falling lately. Last.fm was great at that

AmericanChopper3• 3 years ago

It’s amazing that somebody could say this with a straight face. Spotify are so successfully innovative that they basically ended music piracy.

vsnf• 3 years ago

Those end of year recaps are a highlight for me. I really look forward to it every year, along with comparing against my friends.

They also have a really nice API, which has admittedly been getting more and more locked down, but to claim it was not innovative, especially at the time, is farcical. All this without even mentioning, as other posters have, their effect on legitimizing music streaming. Also, and each user has anecdotally different experiences here, their music recommendations for me are top notch. I've discovered just so, so many pieces of great music through their service.

solumunus• 3 years ago

I used to pirate everything and then Spotify came along, since Spotify I have not pirated once. I’ve used it almost every day for over 10 years. I listen to much more diverse music now. This experience is commonplace. I would say completely changing how a generation consumes music is innovative.

impulser_• 3 years ago

You might think this if you listen to mostly pop music, but I remember the day of having to find pirated uploads on YouTube or pirate the music myself just to listen to music that wasn't from a major label. There was grooveshark but that was pirated music.

Spotify was the first streaming service to let you listen to any type of music from any place in the world. The only place to do that before them was YouTube but this was before you could listen to YouTube videos in audio format.

Spotify has best in class discoverability with generative playlists and recommendations for any type of music. You can find Spotify generative playlist for the most niche music genres.

I uploaded a single electronic music track on Spotify 10 years ago without using a label or advertising it other than to a few friends on FB and it has 100k plays. The same song on YouTube has a few 100 plays.

Again if you just use Spotify to listen to popular music then yeah it will definitely feel like it not much compared to anything else, but if you listen to a lot of music and different types of music there is no match to Spotify.

moneywoes• 3 years ago

will they continue operating? i.e. is this just a threat

CrypticShift• 3 years ago

Related Trivia : France stands out as one of the select countries that enforce a music quota system, which appears to be among the most stringent : a minimum of four in ten songs broadcast by domestic radio stations to be in the French language [1]. (link : it is this same french music that will be further supported by the new Tax)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_quota#France

benjaminwootton• 3 years ago

I quite like how France defend their culture. Some of these rules sound silly, but if they slow down the world homogenising then they aren’t without benefit.

xeromal• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's hard to hate a country for attempting to protect their culture. Kudos.

oyster143• 3 years ago

It seems that fears of music homogenization are overblown, if you check charts on streaming services for different countries (non-english speaking) they would mostly have local music, even for the countries where there are no laws protecting local music. Many of them would have no US/UK artists in top-20 (most Latin American, East European, African countries)

layer8• 3 years ago

Related trivia: In French, you put a space before a semicolon.

Lalabadie2• 3 years ago

In France you do (with interrogation and exclamation marks as well), but not everywhere in the world. I don't think anyone would raise an eyebrow at punctuation without the leading space in a french-speaking text.

DizzyDoo• 3 years ago

Not specific-language related, but see also Canada's CanCon legislation on Canadian-made music quotas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content

arcticbull• 3 years ago

Yup, 40% of radio content and 55% of TV content must be 'Canadian origin' (except the CBC which is 60%).

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

Spotify's balls are in the vicegrip of European music producers. They can never escape it. Hence their profits will always be capped.

CPLX• 3 years ago

Who gives a fuck what Spotify wants?

These big platforms always threaten to “pull out” of markets when regulated. Facebook has pulled the same shenanigans over paying publishers and so on.

I think we should take them up on it. There are many alternatives.

fipar• 3 years ago

It’s what I did (in Uruguay). Switched to Deezer this month.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc2• 3 years ago

Spotify just gives a damn about musicians and the culture they are leeching off.

Just sad that they are the prime distributor of music to almost everyone I know and not services like Bandcamp.

avg_dev2• 3 years ago

The streaming industry pays so very little to the many musicians whose work make them run. It is really sad.

runsWphotons2• 3 years ago

they pay a lot more than piracy

hknmtt• 3 years ago

looks like the increased cost is not worth the profit. simple mathematics. capitalism is nature and you cannot fight the nature because sooner or later something gives.

i8comments• 3 years ago

Megacorp strongarming a government.

stevage• 3 years ago

Title is wrong. "disinvesting" not "divesting"

Spotify starts divesting from France in response to new music-streaming tax

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