Pagny, Biolay, Hallyday ... The Court of Auditors questions the aid paid to the biggest artists

Creation aid should be, at least in the collective imagination, paid to young artists in the making. Surprise, according to a June 2023 report from the Court of Auditors, the largest share of subsidies – which represents hundreds of thousands of euros – benefits established artists. In 2021, for example, Florent Pagny, more than 35 years of career, was rewarded with 271,000 euros. Bernard Lavilliers, nearly 60 years of career, and 120,000 euros in aid for creation. Or Benjamin Biolay and Juliette Armanet, whose notoriety is well established, who respectively received 119,000 and 154,000 euros. Not without a certain irony, the Court of Auditors is also surprised to find among the last beneficiaries a certain Johnny Hallyday, whose accounts were watered between 2019 and 2022 by 333,890 euros. The artist, we recall, died in 2017.

There is nothing illegal in these funding allocations, recalls Le Canard enchaîné. But, for the Court of Auditors, these aids deviate from their original intention. “Spending devoted to artistic creation is intended to promote musical diversity, new talents and innovative projects”, remind the experts. But that's not really the case. A handful of big producers and established artists get “a substantial share of the aid,” while the rest are sprinkled over a slew of young artists and smaller labels. The Court of Auditors "wonders about the usefulness of significant aid granted to projects carried out by established artists and whose economic balance does not appear to require particular support".

The question is all the more relevant when the cake is big, very big. “With each purchase of a smartphone, the consumer receives a tax of 14 euros for the right to copy music,” recalls Le Canard enchaîné. All products that are likely to contain music are thus affected: concerning CDs and DVDs to be burned at the start, the fee has been extended to external hard drives, USB keys and memory cards, MP3 players, internet boxes , televisions with memory, tablets and smartphones, the sale of the latter constituting the largest share of the sums collected. In 2021, refurbished phones and tablets were added to the list of impacted products. In 2022, the private copying fee amounted to more than 300 million euros, including nearly 170 for “sound rights”, therefore from the music industry

This royalty, paid automatically to copyright societies, is shared between the rights holders - artists, producers, record companies... - who receive three quarters of it, "the remaining quarter normally being used to subsidize "cultural actions “”, recalls the Court of Auditors. On the front line, the Civil Society of Phonographic Producers (SCPP) which represents large publishers such as Sony Music, Universal or Warner, on the one hand. And the Civil Society of Producers of Phonograms of France (SPPF), for independent labels, on the other hand.

Both defend their system of allocating creative aid over which they have the upper hand. The SCPP affirms that the creation, even carried out by confirmed artists, presents a risk. Especially since their projects cost more. The SPPF, for its part, produces figures which are intended to be enlightening. According to her, 90% of the aid “was allocated to projects of “new talents””. She adds that she has to face the risk of seeing artists who generate a lot of rights leave her if they "felt they did not receive enough aid".

Without being able to force them to do so, the Court of Auditors recommends that the SCPP and the SPPF review the distribution of these subsidies to return to their initial objective. To do this, it would be necessary to "reduce the share of the artistic and cultural action budget devoted to projects led by established artists". And favor more young people who have not yet emerged. The debate is open.