There’s a hot topic that’s been rocking the very closed world of streaming music for the past few months: government taxHe was supposed to finance French creativity through the National Music Center (CNM). On the face of it, there is no situation that will disturb the consumer, and the manager has taken care to indicate that this tax will not be felt from their subscriptions. for this theory.
In practice, everything indicates that this promise will not be kept. Picture of Deezer’s deputy director, Stéphane Rougeot: his service’s kidneys won’t be strong enough to pay the tax alone. On the set of BFMTV, she doesn’t hesitate to call the project an “anti-Deezer tax.” It must be said that it is difficult to swallow the pill for serving. 60% of turnover is produced in Francecompared to an average of 3% for the competition.
Flow tax will increase prices, it’s inevitable
As a reminder, this tax aims to recover 1.75% of the revenue of music streaming services. “At a time when issues of sovereignty, whether digital or cultural sovereignty, are quite powerful, Deezer [qui est] a French platform would find itself much more hit and much less competitive”, explains Stéphane Rougeot.
The subtext couldn’t be clearer: Deezer will have to raise its prices to pay the tax. And if the rest of the market players haven’t talked about it yet, you only need to see the evolution of the industry in the last few months to understand that the increase is inevitable. Apple Music made the first draw, followed by Spotify and YouTube Music last. All of them announced a price increase.
Whether this increase is related to the flow tax or not, the result is the same: it’s the consumer who raises a toast. The measure, meanwhile, has to go into effect by September 30.
Source : BFMTV
