ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the state of the French music business and then looks at two examples of issues which characterize, firstly, France’s reaction to the challenge to the world music industry posed by the internet, and, secondly, France’s attempts to affirm her cultural and commercial identity in the global market for music. ’Music’ in France is undoubtedly a complex system of interacting institutions in which the opportunities for conflict and tension are numerous. France has been at the forefront of debates and restructurings of the music industry provoked by new technologies of computerized music. France was arguably the first country properly to conceptualize – and rationalizes within an institutional structure – the issue of intellectual property rights, at least in the field of music. The Music Export Office has essentially a dual objective: it aims to increase the presence of French music abroad and to raise its market share, and also to encourage the staging of concerts by French musicians.
