Only 52,600 of the 11 million creators present on streaming platforms generated more than $10,000 in royalties in 2023 [10]. At the same time, platforms use their works to train generative AI models without compensation. By 2027, a choice becomes unavoidable: establish a mandatory collective license on training data, or let French cultural value finance models whose headquarters are elsewhere.
A sector that weighs heavily but loses ground in the economy
In 2024, cultural and creative industries generated €102.7 billion in revenue [5]. They represent 2.9% of French GDP [5]. This broad definition is that of France Créative.
The DEPS at the Ministry of Culture measures a narrower field. On this basis, culture weighed €47.1 billion in 2022, or 2.0% of the entire economy, compared with 2.1% in 2021 [2]. The strict share reached 2.6% of GDP in 2003. It stabilized around 2.3% until 2018, then slipped to 2.0% in 2022 [2]. Over a quarter-century, culture has lost relative ground in the French economy, even though it has recovered in volume.
Cultural employment rebounded. In 2023, 779,600 people exercise a cultural profession as their main activity in France, representing 2.7% of total employment [7]. Between 2023 and 2024, France showed the strongest growth in Europe in the cultural sector, with 109,200 additional jobs according to Eurostat [7]. Yet 78% of French cultural enterprises have no employees, compared with 65% across the entire economy [6]. Job growth coexists with extreme fragmentation of structures.
The sectoral recomposition over two decades is profound. The share of audiovisual in cultural value added progresses by two percentage points between 2000 and 2022 to reach 27% [2]. Video games drive this increase, with structural growth of 11% annually in volume between 2010 and 2022 [2]. Conversely, press and books represented 30% of cultural value added at the end of the 1990s. They now weigh only 14.4% of the cultural sector in 2022 [2].
Geographically, in 2023, 18% of EU cultural enterprises were located in France, the largest share in the EU ahead of Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain [6]. That same year, France represented 17.4% of the EU’s cultural value added, behind Germany [6].
Household demand remains robust. In 2024, they consume €38.6 billion in cultural goods and services [1]. Adding related goods, the total reaches €67.6 billion [1].
Streaming creates a mass market, compensation remains in the hands of a few
The sector’s major transformation lies in value distribution, not overall volume. In recorded music, in 2024, 77% of revenue came from streaming [8]. In 2012, this share was only 11% [8]. In 2024, streaming totals 138 billion plays for 27 million users in France [9].
The market has exploded. Creator compensation has not kept pace. UNESCO describes the level of remuneration per stream as structurally inequitable [10]. Result: only 52,600 of the 11 million creators present on the platforms earned more than $10,000 in royalties in 2023 [10]. The rest share the crumbs of a bloated catalog.
The same mechanism operates in video. Video on demand weighs €2.5 billion in revenue in France in 2025 [1]. It represents more than 85% of the video market, growing by more than 10% [1]. Linear consumption, television with fixed schedules, now accounts for less than 50% among French workers [18]. For 18-24 year-olds, 83% of video consumption is on-demand [18].
Inequality in access to culture according to income and education persists over the entire long period measured by DEPS since 1973. In 2024, 54% of households with income exceeding €3,000 per month visited at least one exhibition or museum [1]. Among low-income households, this proportion falls to 23% [1].
On reading, between 1997 and 2008, the share of non-readers among office workers rose from 19% to 32% [17]. Among managers, it progressed only from 7% to 10% over the same period [17]. DEPS summarizes: “differences between social groups have tended to widen over the past decade due to the drop-off of part of the working-class population” [17].
The Pass Culture did not correct the divide; it accompanied it
Pass Culture was designed to reduce these practice inequalities. The Court of Audit delivered its first assessment in December 2024: the finding is severe [11].
Among young people from working-class backgrounds whose parents work as workers or employees, only 68% had activated their pass in 2023 [11]. Windfall effects for the wealthier are documented. The Court concludes that the pass “appears more as a support device for young people already familiar with and interested in cultural practices, but not as a gateway for the most disadvantaged individuals” [11].
Once credits are consumed or expired, only 18% of users continue the activities they discovered [11]. Public spending, meanwhile, has increased considerably. The individual portion rose from €93 million in 2021 to €244 million projected for 2024. Added to this are €80 million for the collective portion financed by the education ministry [11].
Generative AI floods catalogs and dilutes human creator compensation
Generative AI exerts new pressure on creators. Before its breakthrough, the dominant idea was that AI would first affect routine tasks and create growing demand for creative jobs [14]. This prediction no longer holds.
Generative AI now excels at creative and analytical tasks. It automates graphics, illustration, photography. It creates new hybrid professions, but without guarantee that existing creators will benefit.
In 2024, Deezer revealed that at least 10% of tracks delivered daily are entirely created by AI [8]. This represents more than 10,000 tracks daily [8]. These contents are produced at zero marginal cost. They mechanically dilute payment per stream for human creators.
The value chain works as follows: platforms capture most subscription and advertising revenue. They compensate creators per stream at a level structurally low according to UNESCO [10]. The influx of AI content further reduces each human play’s share. The value added of cultural and creative industries grew fourteen times faster than GDP between 2019 and 2024 [5]. This growth says nothing about how that value is distributed.
Dependence on American platforms is also technological. Models, data, and graphics chips are held by large American corporations, a situation Axelle Arquié describes as structural in her work on emerging jobs [15]. Bruno Patino, in The Age of Human Obsolescence (2026), describes how AI fits into an environment already dominated by platforms that monetize attention and data, accelerating it further [16]. Personalization has a collective cost: recommendation systems fragment shared cultural experiences [16].
The AI Act has imposed transparency obligations since August 2025 on the training data of generative AI models [13]. Transparency without compensation does not change value distribution. The CSPLA formulated the objective: “a healthy and sustainable licensing market that encourages responsible AI innovation, that respects fundamental principles of fair competition and creator compensation” [13]. It remains to make it operational.
Public funding declines, territories fragment
The Ministry of Culture’s 2025 budget stands at €4.6 billion [12]. It is stable in value compared with spending in 2023 and 2024. Stable in value means decline in volume under inflation. In volume, state cultural spending fell 3.1% in 2023, against 2.3% for the overall budget [12].
Local authorities spent €10.7 billion on culture in 2023 [12]. Between 2024 and 2025, 47% of them voted to cut their cultural budgets [12]. This local decline weakens local structures: theater companies, independent bookstores, concert halls in the regions.
Territorial concentration remains massive. In 2023, 50% of employment in cultural and creative industries was located in Île-de-France [5]. Progressive regionalization is confirmed, notably driven by festivals, but does not yet offset the structural imbalance.
In 2024, for the first time in more than thirty years, imports of art objects, collectibles, and antiquities exceeded French exports of corresponding items. The gap reaches €87.5 million [1].
Establish collective licensing on training data, refocus aid on mediation
Cultural policies have operated for forty years on the same logic: make accessible through supply, facilities, access, and consumption aid. Since 1973, DEPS surveys show that this logic does not erase practice inequalities linked to education and social background [17]. Practices renew themselves, but early familiarity and educational capital remain stable determinants. Technological progress creates shared prosperity only if institutions prevent dominant actors from monopolizing gains, a mechanism Carl Benedikt Frey documents in How Progress Ends (2025) [3]. Without institutional pressure, the balance of power remains fatal for independent creators [4].
The main 2027 decision hinges on an architectural choice: establish a mandatory collective license on the use of works to train AI models, managed by collective management societies (SACEM, SCAM, ADAGP), with payments to creators. The model of neighboring rights negotiated by the French press since 2019 provides the operational framework. It remains to extend it to cultural industries and make it resistant to contractual workarounds.
This choice transfers the decision on platform value toward creators, through management societies. It makes a theoretically existing right enforceable in law. It requires European coordination to prevent platforms from moving model training elsewhere [13].
It also presupposes a control capacity that neither SACEM nor CSPLA fully possess today [13]. The AI Act creates the transparency framework. France can push, in its implementation and in European negotiations, for this transparency to lead to effective compensation.
Two complementary choices accompany this central decision. First, reduce Pass Culture’s universal credit. Refocusing it on young people from backgrounds least familiar with culture, by strengthening the collective portion tied to schools, implies mediation by teachers [11]. Public spending thus refocused would cost less while producing greater lasting effect. Next, stabilize and extend contribution obligations to creation financing imposed on foreign platforms via the CNC and CNM, making them less avoidable through contractual restructurings [12].
Sources
[1] Ministry of Culture, DEPS, “Key Figures 2025: Statistics on Culture and Communication,” June 2026, https://www.culture.gouv.fr/espace-documentation/statistiques-ministerielles-de-la-culture2/publications/chiffres-cles-2025-de-la-culture-et-de-la-communication (accessed 22/09/2026).
[2] Ministry of Culture, DEPS, Nicolas Pietrzyk, “The Direct Economic Weight of Culture in 2022,” Culture chiffres no. 2024-4, July 2024, https://www.culture.gouv.fr/espace-documentation/statistiques-ministerielles-de-la-culture2/publications/collections-de-synthese/culture-chiffres-2007-2026/le-poids-economique-direct-de-la-culture-en-2022-cc-2024-4 (accessed 22/09/2026).
[3] Carl Benedikt Frey, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, Princeton University Press, 2025, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691233079/how-progress-ends (accessed 22/09/2026).
[4] Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, “Can A.I. Be Pro-Worker?,” The New Yorker, 2026, https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/john-cassidy (accessed 22/09/2026).
[5] France Créative / Oxford Economics, Panorama of Cultural and Creative Industries 2025, December 2025, https://www.artcena.fr/sites/default/files/medias/rapport-panorama-industries-culturelles-creatives-2025.pdf (accessed 22/09/2026).
[6] Eurostat, “Culture statistics: cultural enterprises,” 2023 data, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Culture_statistics_-_cultural_enterprises (accessed 22/09/2026).
[7] Eurostat, “Culture statistics: cultural employment,” 2024 data, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Culture_statistics_-_cultural_employment (accessed 22/09/2026).
[8] Ministry of Culture, DEPS, “Key Figures 2025: Recorded Music,” June 2026, https://www.culture.gouv.fr/mc/content/download/391072/file/Chiffres%20cl%C3%A9s%202025_DEPS_Musique%20enregistr%C3%A9e_Fiche.pdf (accessed 22/09/2026).
[9] SNEP, “Assessment of the Recorded Music Market in 2024,” March 2025, https://snepmusique.com/actualites-du-snep/prod-musicale-francaise-en-2024/ (accessed 22/09/2026).
[10] UNESCO, “Revenue Distribution and Transformation in the Music Streaming Value Chain,” 2023, https://www.unesco.org/creativity/sites/default/files/medias/fichiers/2023/01/2-policy_perspectives_music_fr-web%20(1).pdf (accessed 22/09/2026).
[11] Court of Audit, First Assessment of Pass Culture, thematic public report, December 2024, https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/premier-bilan-du-pass-culture (accessed 22/09/2026).
[12] Ministry of Culture, DEPS, “Key Figures 2025: Financing Culture,” June 2026, https://www.culture.gouv.fr/mc/content/download/391039/file/Chiffres%20cl%C3%A9s%202025_DEPS_Financement%20de%20la%20culture_Fiche.pdf (accessed 22/09/2026).
[13] Ministry of Culture, CSPLA, “Report on Compensation for Cultural Content and Copyright Facing Generative AI,” June 2025, https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/medias-creation-rapide/cspla_ia_remuneration_contenus_culturels_partie_juridique_juin_2025.pdf (accessed 22/09/2026).
[14] ILO, “The Impact of AI on Work and Employment,” 2024, https://www.wathi.org/wathinote-initiative-ia/limpact-de-lia-sur-le-travail-et-lemploi-organisation-internationale-du-travail-2024 (accessed 22/09/2026).
[15] Axelle Arquié, CEPII / Observatory of Threatened and Emerging Jobs, interview in La Vie Ouvrière, April 2026; publications in L’Économie politique no. 110, 2026/2, https://shs.cairn.info/publications-de-axelle-arquie–111394 (accessed 22/09/2026).
[16] Bruno Patino, The Age of Human Obsolescence, Grasset, 2026, ISBN 978-2-246-84534-8.
[17] Olivier Donnat, DEPS, Cultural Practices 1973–2008: Generational Dynamics and Social Weight, Culture études no. 2011-7, Ministry of Culture, 2011, https://www.culture.gouv.fr (accessed 22/09/2026).
[18] ARCOM, “Annual Study on Access to Paid Audio Offerings,” 2025, data reported in EcoConscient TMT, https://www.eco-conscient.com/art-87373-le-marche-mondial-des-abonnements-musicaux-poursuit-sa-croissance-en-2024.html (accessed 22/09/2026).
