“Being as close as possible to the needs of creators”: an interview of Julie Poureau from la Sacem and Chloé Nataf from Trempo

Julie Pour­eau, why did Sacem decide to sup­port Slash 2?

JP: Our interest in Slash 2 goes back two years ago. At the time, we were ques­tion­ing the field of entre­pren­eur­ship, which is increas­ingly present in the music world. At the time, Sacem was con­duct­ing a study on this top­ic, which was also sup­por­ted by the Min­istry of Cul­ture via the DGMIC (Gen­er­al Dir­ec­tion for Media and Cul­tur­al Indus­tries). It was a theme that we had to tackle for our mem­bers. So we con­tac­ted Trempo, a bene­fi­ciary of the European Com­mis­sion’s Music Moves Europe scheme. This oppor­tun­ity came at the right time in our thinking.

Chloé Nataf, why did Trempo talk to Sacem?

CN: There was a desire to move in the same dir­ec­tion. At MaMA 2019, we presen­ted our dif­fer­ent mis­sions and dis­cussed par­ti­cip­at­ory fin­an­cing in par­tic­u­lar. Then we talked about entre­pren­eur­ship and men­tioned a pro­ject to sup­port artists. We felt that there was a com­mon desire then.. For Trempo, regis­ter­ing the sup­port of the Sacem allowed us to diver­si­fy our sources of fin­an­cing. It showed our abil­ity to innov­ate in our search for fund­ing. And Sacem is a net­work of experts, a slightly dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive… We were inter­ested to bene­fit from this sup­port. We had not yet worked on the optim­isa­tion of pat­ri­mo­ni­al rights. Sacem was there­fore the ideal partner.

Why is Sacem, the French authors’ soci­ety, involved in a European programme?

JP: In 2020, we had already car­ried out a European cooper­a­tion pro­ject, “Future Song­writ­ing”, sup­por­ted by Sacem Uni­versité. The idea was to take sec­ond­ary school stu­dents behind the scenes of the cre­ation of a song. The fact that we went for a second European pro­ject with Slash is a response to the expect­a­tions of our mem­bers. We are devel­op­ing our pro­grams to be as close as pos­sible to the needs of cre­at­ors. With the sub­ject of entre­pren­eur­ship, the idea is not for the artist to do everything on his own, but for him to be able to sur­round itself and, above all, to be aware that tools exist. It comes a time when the artist can­not always do everything alone.

CN : The idea is not to work on the dis­in­ter­me­di­ation of the artist. At the begin­ning of their career, artists have to prove them­selves on their own in order to be iden­ti­fied. Once they have man­aged to get past this stage, it is import­ant to give them the tools to struc­ture them­selves and to provide them with a pro­fes­sion­al entour­age. With Slash, the object­ive is to pre­pare them for their rela­tion­ship with the eco­sys­tem to make a sus­tain­able career.

In the cur­rent con­text, made dif­fi­cult by the pan­dem­ic, do you think it is import­ant to sup­port « slash artists »?

JP: This is a shift that Sacem had to make even before the health crisis. The cre­ation of the engin­eer­ing office, offi­cially launched in Septem­ber 2021, is an example. We want to strengthen sup­port, and the engin­eer­ing office will give impetus and provide tools for this. Our voca­tion is to fol­low new trends, includ­ing the one of of entrepreneurship.

How quickly did you set up this partnership?

CN: With Slash 1, we had already anti­cip­ated the sub­mis­sion of the file for Slash 2 to the European Com­mis­sion. If we had waited, we would not have been right on course. The file was writ­ten quickly because the work phase had been car­ried out before­hand. Sacem was very prompt to pro­pose experts on the sub­ject of entrepreneurship.

JP: Yes, we quickly mobil­ised intern­al con­tacts with­in the vari­ous depart­ments of Sacem: Sacem Innov­a­tion, Sacem Uni­versité, the com­mu­nic­a­tion depart­ment and the insti­tu­tion­al rela­tions department.

How was this part­ner­ship organ­ised in con­crete terms? Did you work togeth­er to choose ment­ors, speak­ers, themes and artists?

CN : The themes and mobil­it­ies were defined from the out­set because they had to be included in the file sent to the European Com­mis­sion. For the choice of ment­ors, there was obvi­ously con­sulta­tion. We pro­ceeded by going back and forth. Sacem was also involved in the artist’s selection.

How were Slash’s tech­nic­al part­ners chosen, such as Pro­mus (Den­mark) and MIL (Por­tugal)?

JP: We relied on Trem­po’s expert­ise in choos­ing part­ners. Den­mark came into play quite quickly with the Pro­mus struc­ture, which is the loc­al equi­val­ent of Trempo. The Nor­d­ic coun­tries are very advanced in busi­ness and artist train­ing issues.

CN: We already knew Jes­per Mer­dahl, dir­ect­or of Pro­mus, whom we had invited to speak at the Slash con­ven­tion organ­ised with the European Music Incub­at­or. Pro­mus has entre­pren­eur­i­al pro­grams for artists. As for Por­tugal, we were in touch with the MIL via Fabi­en Miclet, who works as a con­sult­ant for Europe and for this event. MIL is a part­ner of Jump, a train­ing pro­ject for entre­pren­eurs in the music industry. We have been want­ing to make this part­ner­ship a real­ity for a long time.

What bene­fits do you expect from Slash 2?

JP: It’s a basis for con­tinu­ing to work because we still have a long way to go. I see it more as a first step, the first stone of a stra­tegic pro­ject for Sacem.

CN: The same goes for Trempo, even though we are already at the third step. We are con­tinu­ing to test edu­ca­tion­al con­tents, speak­ers, etc. After­wards, we will carry out an eval­u­ation and draw con­clu­sions about what works and what we could adapt to oth­er systems.

JP: These assess­ments will provide a wealth of inform­a­tion and will allow us to record feed­back. We will see what this can bring to Sacem’s mem­ber artists and how to con­tin­ue to build and consolidate.

Julie Pour­eau, is Sacem think­ing of renew­ing its sup­port for Slash 3?

JP: As long as it fits in with our pri­or­it­ies, of course, we will obvi­ously be will­ing to start the adven­ture again. Espe­cially if we go down the path men­tioned, which is the link between artists and territories.

A few num­bers about Slash Pro­gram — Sea­son 2 :
Num­ber of applic­a­tions for Slash 2: 180
23 dif­fer­ent nationalities
Num­ber of final­ists: 9
Amount of the oper­a­tion: 112,500 euros, includ­ing 90000 euros from the European Uni­on (Music Moves Europe pilot pro­ject) and 22500 euros from the Sacem
Inter­view : Sylvain Chantal
Pho­tos © Filipa Aurélio