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On the Croisette in Cannes, movers and shakers in the music world gather for MIDEM,

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the 38th annual get-together of the international music industry. This year,

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Europe decided to top the bill by organizing the Border Breakers Awards. These new awards,

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supported by the music industry, recognize European artists whose first album sold

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most widely throughout the European Union. For the organizers of the prize, the idea is to

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promote Europe's cultural diversity. We are European because we know that there are Greeks,

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Spaniards, Portuguese, Norwegians, Finns, etc., and we love it. That's our identity.

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We are not a single population, we are different, and it is in this diversity that we find ourselves.

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At the same time, MIDEM provided the opportunity to discuss challenges and perspectives for the

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music business. What was clear, this is an important industry for Europe in terms of

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jobs and earnings, yet it suffers from something of a paradox.

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It suffers and benefits from diversity, that is, languages, cultures, feelings in

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the different countries, which means that music, like cinema, circulates too badly,

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and there is a very clear need to make artists or songs of a country better known in other European

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countries. In one part of Europe, let's say in Greece, they don't know what is happening in the

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north of Sweden, and vice versa. We don't know very much about what is happening in the south

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of Spain, so there is no natural incentive to move the artist from one part of the Union to another.

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For those involved in the business, there's one recurring question. How to improve the

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mobility of artists and their work, both inside and outside the European Union?

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I would like to see better distribution facilities. I'd like to see some practical solutions. I think at an artistic level, there's quite a lot of support, but the business-to-business is where you

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find the gaps. Help European artists to tour and do showcases in other countries. There are big,

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significant problems for smaller companies to reach the market. The barriers to entry are very

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difficult. The cost of marketing is prohibitively expensive. The difficulty with accessing mass media,

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radio, TV, newspapers, is more difficult than it should be. If it's already tough to promote

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exchanges between European countries, what happens when you decide to take on the biggest music market

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in the world? The United States is a bit more nationally oriented than they were before

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September 11, 2001. That made them a little bit more close to the outside world. The opportunity

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to sell European music in the United States is becoming more difficult, but I suspect that

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that's just a business process. I think once there is a realization that the European music

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needs to reach the American market, we'll just have to find new ways of doing it. But at the

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moment it looks difficult, but everything is cyclical. Some countries have taken steps to

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help their artists tackle the major markets outside Europe. That's certainly the case in

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Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Initiatives which the European Commission has watched with

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interest. I think international it's more about access. It's more about knowledge maps,

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understanding how the markets work, understanding who the players are, how retail, how radio, how

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the clubs work. So we wanted to introduce an appropriate mechanism to support music artists,

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managers, producers, publishers and the record companies themselves. And one of those is the

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UK office in America. In France, it's not necessarily obvious when you're looking for something in

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Australia, with the time difference, with the different cultural barriers that may exist,

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to find good contacts and to arouse an interest for your product in the country concerned. We have

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a network of nine offices in the world, on four continents, which actually allow us to be

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a relay for these French professionals, to help them either find distributions,

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licenses, to organise tours, to be present at festivals abroad.

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The industry has made proposals for pilot projects that the European Union has funded,

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and which have shown the practices in the different Member States to stimulate their

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export, but also to create bridges between these different institutions and to see how

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we can find a strong and European response to the American difference, for example.

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This pilot project studied the feasibility of an export office in New York, and this year we

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will deepen the results of this study, which are quite encouraging.

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These sorts of initiatives are all well and good, but the key to success is often more about getting

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the chemistry right. The key to success is simply the talent and the fact that the artist

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directly addresses not only the French public, but all the public. What is interesting is to

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see that the record is close to the gold record in Germany, but in its French version,

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while the success is explained in France, in particular by the quality, the strength of the lyrics of the songs.

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You can always find all kinds of explanations, but I don't think there are any.

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That's what's magical about this job.

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Another sizeable obstacle to the free circulation of artists and their work in Europe is the

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differences in national legislation, an area where most musicians feel powerless.

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And now the next big issue is how to stamp out pirating and illegal downloading from the Internet.

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This is an explosive phenomenon with consequences all down the chain.

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You have to set the rules of the game on the Internet. I believe that the Internet gives a lot of opportunities to music,

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provided that it is paid for. As for piracy, it is illegal. So, indeed, the public authorities at the local level,

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but also the European institutions, and they are not going to allow it, have to do something about it.

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What's clear is that Europe's music industry is facing some major challenges for the future.

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Some of those challenges are already being tackled through European legislation, which offers better protection to artists.

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But more needs to be done, which is why the European Commission is working in concert with the industry itself,

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to give the music business the support it needs.

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But more needs to be done, which is why the European Commission is working in concert with the industry itself,

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to give the music business the support it needs.