Good afternoon, everybody. I would like to thank the committee for having us here today. If you don't mind I will switch to French, which is my mother tongue, and depending on how I felt when I woke up this morning, it might be a little shaky.
Songwriters or composers generally have no revenue for their work other than the fees collected for the reproduction and distribution of their works based on the traditional model—be it on disc, radio or television. With the poorly regulated advent of the digital economy, traditional royalties have dropped dramatically over the past few years.
However, the distribution of artists' work continues to increase. In light of this increased dissemination of works, coupled with a drop in revenue from traditional royalties, government support should definitely be much higher, given the clear lack of will to rectify this problem.