Wenceslas Lizé
(Université de Poitiers – GRESCO)
Workshop « Markets, exploitation and employment in the
music industry »
Labour market intermediaries
in French popular music
Introduction
• Two main issues:
• 1. Who are the intermediaries that intervene on the
musicians labor market and what they do?
• 2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and
what techniques they have for getting more of it?
1. The kinds of intermediaries that
exist and what they do (1/5)
• A French peculiarity: Pôle Emploi spectacle, a specialized
branch of the national employment agency (Pôle Emploi)
whose main mission is to bring together employers and artists
of the performing arts, including musicians.
• Artists who are users of Pôle emploi spectacle are very
numerous but they first enroll to assert their right to
unemployment benefit associated with the regime of
intermittency.
• Regime de l’intermittence (regime of intermittency), another
French specificity, allows artists of the performing arts to
receive unemployment benefits, provided if they have worked
a certain amount of time (actually 507 hours) during a certain
period (actually the last 319 days).
• However, Pôle Emploi spectacle plays a minimal role in
finding job for unemployed artists.
1. The kinds of intermediaries
that exist and what they do (2/5)
• The key actors in the musicians labor market are
three kinds of private and individual intermediaries:
agents, managers and tourneurs (“show
producer”).
• However, on the labor market, these intermediaries
are not inescapable: a significant proportion (61%)
of the 9000 artists or bands identified in 2008 say
they have neither agent nor tourneur or manager.
• But when the matchings are supported by
intermediaries, most of them are supported by
agetns, managers or tourneurs.
1. The kinds of intermediaries
that exist and what they do (3/5)
• The word "tourneur" means a “show producer” (or
“show entrepreneur”) who’s got a category 2 or
category 3 license delivered by ministry of Work.
• Tourneur organizes concerts of an artist or group,
and sells them to operators of entertainment
venues (show producers with category 1 license,
close to the figure of the concert promoter in UK).
1. The kinds of intermediaries
that exist and what they do (4/5)
• The boundaries of these three trades (agent,
manager, tourneur) are permeable, and the
professional figure of the manager exerts a certain
attraction on other intermediaries’ craft.
• Trend toward a “managerisation” of the way
intermediaries are working:
o extension of the intermediaries’ scope of intervention in the
activities of the artist, and long term support of the artist interests
through career development.
o entrepreneurial rationalisation of positioning strategies and artist
promotion, closely linked to the growing affinities between
professional habitus and the practices and knowledge of
neoliberal management.
1. The kinds of intermediaries
that exist and what they do (5/5)
• We can distinguish schematically the intermediation at two
levels of the structured labor market: low and high.
• Low: In the emerging or weakly recognized bands, the
intermediation functions are often supported internally by one
of the musicians. The most accessible activities are then
concerts.
• High: Intermediation system surrounding famous artists is much
more diverse. They often have a publisher, a record company,
a manager, a tourneur, who can even call a local promoter,
optionally an agent, etc. The manager then concentrates on
coordinating the various partners (according to flexibility that
record company lets him) and on the career development.
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (1/6)
• Tourneurs, managers and agents must be distinguished in
terms of contractual arrangements and compensation system.
• Contract between the manager or agent and the artist is a
mandate
• In return for their services, managers and agents receive a
commission capped at 10% of income of the artist, which can
go up to 15% when the artist entrusts them a career
development mission, which is the case with all managers.
• However, according to the contract between the artist and
the manager or the agent, the percentage of remuneration
and the plate on which it is based may vary.
• The tourneur is most of the time the employer of the artists: the
contract is usually not a mandate but an employment
contract. Tourneurs remunerated themselves mainly on
concerts income.
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (2/6)
• Tourneurs adopt strategies of financial risk reduction
and optimization of concerts income which depend
on the symbolic and economic value of artists.
• “Direct production” is favored in two opposite
cases: emerging artists and artists who, on the
contrary, experiencing strong reputation.
o First case, the turner is absent: the musicians do not have
sufficient reputation to access its services, so they self-produce.
o Second case, tourneurs opt for the direct production since the
financial risk is low and the hope of gain is high. They pay a lump
sum to the local promoter (concert hall, festival) and rely on high
ticket revenues.
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (3/6)
• With the other arrangement, the “show cession”,
the tourneur remains the employer of the artists but
sells the show at a fixed price to the venue owner
who then bears the risk of weak income from the
ticketing. The show cession is the dominant model
at intermediate levels of the hierarchy of symbolic
value among artists. The uncertainty about the
number of tickets to be sold pushes tourneurs to
transfer risk to the venues (essentially subsidized
venues) by selling the show.
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (4/6)
• The strategies of intermediaries to increase revenue
unfold in many other dimensions. In general,
whatever the type of remuneration (commission for
managers and agents, concert revenue for
tourneurs), intermediaries have an economic
interest to work with renowned musicians and to the
growing success of the artists with whom they work.
• This is why an important part of the business and the
strategies they implement are aimed, in terms of
"the economy of symbolic goods" (Bourdieu), to
increase the symbolic capital of artists and
converting it into economic capital.
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (5/6)
• Whatever the symbolic and commercial value of
the musicians which they look after, intermediaries
typically attempt to increase their profit by
diversifying sources of income.
• There are two non-exclusive ways of doing this:
diversifying the sources of income of the artist and
diversifying the activity of the intermediary itself.
• Regarding the first way, intermediaries are very
active in prospecting or in inventing new sources of
income
2. Where intermediaries’ money comes from and what
techniques they have for getting more of it? (6/6)
• The other way to diversify sources of income lies in the
diversification of the activities of the intermediary itself.
• Surveys show that the majority of agents, managers and
tourneurs perform at least one other activity remunerated
from within the music sector.
• The polyactivity (diversificaton of activity in toher field) is also
very high: while it affects only a third of the tourneurs, it affects
about half of the surveyed agents and managers.
• Taking into account jointly multiactivity and polyactivity, the
part of intermediaries involved neither in one nor the other is
very low (27% of the tourneurs, 33% of agents and 10% of
managers).
Annex. Inquiries and data
Inquiries led within two collectives:
• 2008: with Delphine Naudier and Olivier Roueff,
survey financed by the Study department of the
Ministry of Culture and Communication on the
intermediaries of artistic labor. We published the
book Intermédiaires du travail artistique. A la
frontière de l’art et du commerce (2011).
• 2009-2012: IMPACT program financed by the
National Research Agency and coordinated by
Laurent Jeanpierre. About twenty researchers.
Wider definition of the intermediaries of the artistic
worlds.
Annex. Inquiries and data
From macro to micro level:
• Database of IRMA (Center of information and resources for
current musics): almost all of the professional and semiprofessional artists and French groups (about 9.000) at the end
of 2000s and their manager, agent and/or tour manager
(2.330 intermediaries).
• Survey by questionnaire of the IMPACT team: 189
intermediaries of the " current musics " (agents, managers, tour
managers)
• Given onto the average and low regions of the hierarchy of
fame or success: survey by questionnaire made in 2011 by the
Pole des musiques actuelles des Pays de la Loire on 32
structures of "artists' developers" (on 39 in this regional area).
• 20 interviews with managers and "artists' developers"