Radio stations fight tough quotas

INDEPENDENT radio stations in France have been calling on MPs to drop plans to toughen up laws on broadcasting French music.

Since 1994, stations have been forced to broadcast a quota of 40% French music in an attempt to stem the rise of English-language hits.

However, MPs have claimed that this has resulted in stations playing the same limited set of songs in order to fulfil quotas.

In mid September a committee passed an amendment to a new media law under discussion that when a group of ten titles represents more than 50% of French music played by a station, they will no longer could towards filling its quota.

The heads of RTL, NRJ, Lagardère Active and Indés Radios have described the amendment as an attack on freedom of expression and the media.

They have written to MPs asking them to scrap the amendment and are calling on listeners to campaign against it.

The head of Indés Radio Jean-Éric Valli said that listeners would simply go to other sources such as Spotify and Deezer (who are not subject to quotas) if they were forced to listen to music they did not want to hear.

Record labels have welcomed the decision to toughen the quotas which they say represents an opportunity to increase the exposure of artists who sing in French.

The number of albums released in French has dropped 66% between 2003 and 2014, according to figures released by the record labels.

With big-selling artists such as Daft Punk, David Guetta and Charlotte Gainsbourg choosing to sing in English to appeal to a wider audience - 83% of French music production is no longer in French.
Photo: Flickr/Le Camping