What's even worse is that I guess those government services must pay royalties, so this means Canadians will be subsidising music they clearly don't like (otherwise it would be popular and this kind of law wouldn't be necessary)
I think you are missing the full picture. What I mean there is no fair free market of art, for example can my country with 20 million population create cartoons to compete with Disney? Of course not, Disney creates the generic american culture stuff, and then they can dump it on small countries and make a bit of extra profit from ads and toys.
Anyway I am not debating what laws are fair or not, just mentioning there is no fair competition and the best music, TV show or movie wins. I would personally tax foreign stuff a bit and use the money to support local production.
Let me ask you this then. Who actually wins in this scenario?
For my own country market Disney can do it cheaper, free . If I want to make a cartoon to promote say a traditional story I need to do a lot of work and then sell my work. Disney already made a local TV channel where they just translate their existing american stuff, slap ads and profit.
So what are the upsides and downsides
- Disney makes money
- US pushes their culture(including the wird shit where is super funny to have characters tortured by explosions, dropping big objects on them or those children/teen movies where is fun to bully the dorks)
- only win is our children have more options then we had in the past
I do not want to suppress Disney, I would put a tax , use that to sponsor some local animation schools to create more content with local themes.
There are a few local cartoons, there are small budget and the reason they exist is because parents demand/appreciate such products.
I did not watched cable TV in years but last time I did there were only american translated channels for children but with youtube I could watch with my son cartoons from different countries but this cartoons don't have a giant behind them to create their own TV channels.
Now let me respond to you in a similar way you did, maybe you understand it better.
You create a cool app but when you try to sell it MS, Google and Apple release a similar app for free, you try then to make a different app but again the giant has a free offer, you do that again and again but all the time a similar but not identical free product was launched by the giants for free. Your products were better but the giants had a free shittier version so you only gained a small market. You might say that is OK you get screwed because customers got free stuff, but is it free though? The giants made the money in different way(sometimes in ilegal ways, sometimes in a l4gal but unethical way).
My point is there is no actual fair competition when you compete with a giant, so if Windows or Notepad is the most installed OS/program you would be wrong to conclude that means this is because of the quality of the product.
While there are many good things coming from so many cultures around the world slowly converging further thanks to social media technology, many things are lost too
My gut instinct is with you. It's weird and nationalistic and what even..
But... I was born in a tiny country with tiny language. The notion of playing, I don't know, Russian or Chinese or Polish music in the government elevator or on government phone, makes me immediately have more sympathy and understanding. Like, it wouldn't even be a consideration - of course government waiting music will be in your own language.
I think that kind of disregard for their first language is exactly what is making Quebecois protective of their language and culture. Just because they are on North American continent, doesn't make their language
I don't think there's really much about liking music that decides that it will be played.
The music that is played is chosen by wealthy people, and forced on the listeners. People like things they are exposed to often
Are you suggesting that the popularity of music is based solely on its merits and not multi-million dollar marketing budgets of the (mostly English speaking) pop-culture industrial complex? Now that is something for The Onion.
Side note: This rule is provincial, and applies only to Quebec. Many Quebecers love their local artists. Indeed this initiative wouldn't be possible without some measure of support.
I wonder if it would make sense to do both. Fund artists with the condition that their work is free for governmental use—then make sure the government actually takes advantage.
I suspect part of Quebec's goal is to give home-grown music more cultural attention, so that eventually it may become more popular in its own right. But the government won't necessarily decide to use a song just because it's free—after all, there's plenty of free creative commons music available already.
Policies like this do their small part to help prevent the whole world from turning into a United States pop music mono-culture.