MEFCPFS · Music Exports and Foreign Cultural Policy in France and Spain
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-03-01 → 2025-09-03
- EU contribution
- €224,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Music Exports and Foreign Cultural Policy in France and Spain
The project addresses the paradox that while digital platforms have enabled global music circulation and reduced language barriers, structural frontiers still shape international flows. In France and Spain, music export is key but marked by tensions between global market forces, cultural policies, and linguistic diversity. It responds to gaps in knowledge on: How export strategies navigate pressures from platform capitalism, corporate concentration, and English dominance. How cultural policies use music export as economic tools and soft power, sometimes instrumentalising “diversity.” The lack of comparative, empirical studies of language and music export in the digital age. This matters because music export is not only economic but also political and cultural, shaping diversity, identity, and diplomacy. Examining France and Spain illuminates: Whether diversity is genuinely supported or symbolic. How music influences cultural representation abroad. The impact of policy on careers and democratic access to culture. The role of music in sustainable livelihoods and soft power strategies. The project’s objectives are to: Document export strategies and practices in France and Spain, with attention to language and digitalisation. Map and assess export programmes within cultural policy frameworks. Provide a comparative analysis as a pilot for broader European awareness of the social impact of music export policies.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Digital platforms have dramatically accelerated the global circulation of popular music, creating a new geography of production and consumption in which the so-called ‘language barrier’ between ‘national’ cultures is constantly repositioned. Whilst English has been the dominant language of the global popular music industry since the 1960s, nowadays any artist can speak to a global audience in their own idiom through the use of streaming services and social media. However, despite the apparent immediate and transnational circulation of music, frontiers still exist between countries, and so export remains a crucial category of action for music professionals. Moreover, states’ foreign cultural policies increasingly play a crucial role in music export as part of soft power strategies, thus adapting and contributing to new definitions of national identities. Indeed, whether such policies are related to safeguarding supposedly ‘authentic’ or ‘indigenous’ musics or strengthening the infrastructures of a domestic musical industry, they are confronted with one crucial problem: the meanings and roles ascribed to ‘local’, ‘domestic’, ‘national’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘minorities’ in music. This environment necessitates thorough review of export models applicable to a variety of localised music industries, with a critical approach to contemporary relations between arts and politics. This project aims to examine the nature and characteristics of French and Spanish music export activity within contexts of digitalisation and globalisation, with a specific focus on cultural diversity and a critical stance on the market-driven vision of music export. A comparative study across two non-anglophone nations with official languages of international significance but substantially different attitudes to public spending and linguistic protectionism will serve as a pilot for greater awareness of the social impact of European and global music export.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER · ManchesterCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union