France. The National Music Center is one of the last born of state operators but it is not the least endowed. It is even very well endowed, which should not prevent it from measuring the effectiveness of its aid, regrets the Court of Auditors which has just made public a report on its management. Created in 2020 from the regrouping of the former national song of song, varieties and jazz and four associations, the new public industrial and commercial establishment responsible for helping a musical sector undermined by the crisis of the disc crisis wiped his baptism of fire with the Cavid crisis.
It received between 423 million euros in 2020 and 2022 in order to help musical actors penalized by the closure of performance halls. But on the other hand, confinement boosted subscriptions to musical streaming platforms which were already very prosperous before the crisis. So that not all credits were allocated, 320 million euros were paid. Not due to a dysfunction of the CNM – the Court wishes to salute the investment of the teams – but of an oversized envelope compared to the needs.
However, the CNM has kept the years covid for the habits of aid of aid and subsidies distribution and the Court would like it to be devoted to its other missions. In particular, it regrets the lack of data on the market and the low measure of the effectiveness of aid. Especially since the CNM has comfortable recipes: state subsidies, a repair of collective management organizations and especially two taxes, one on streaming and the other on the ticket office of living shows that explode. In 2023, its revenue was 90 million euros.
A situation which contrasts with the CNAP, the operator for the plastic arts sector which has a budget ten times less while it manages a collection with significant associated costs (see table opposite). In this regard, the Court suggests that the CNL acquires dissemination musical catalogs or on the contrary assimilated to national treasures. But unlike CNAP, such catalogs do not require many spaces.
