“Swe ask for the time of a song for you to listen to us” is the phrase that accompanies the sharing of the video, about four minutes long, which began to be released this afternoon on various social networks by a series of musicians, including Salvador Sobral, Gisela João, Sérgio Godinho, Carlão, Dino D’Santiago, Luísa Sobral, Capicua, Samuel Úria, Ed Rocha Gonçalves and Catarina Salinas, from Best Youth, Maria João, Celina da Piedade, Stereossauro, Noiserv, Benjamim and Marta Pereira da Costa.
Throughout the animated video, questions such as “but what quotas are these?”, “when were they imposed?” or “Does this apply to all radios?”.
At the end, there is an appeal for the signature of a petition “For the increase of the minimum mandatory quota of Portuguese music on the radios”, available on the ‘site’ www.maismusicaportuguesa.com.
The mandatory minimum quota for Portuguese music on radio stations came into force in 2009. At that time, it was established that it would be 25 percent.
On January 14, 2021, the then Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, announced an increase in the quota to 30%, as part of measures to respond to the covid-19 pandemic, with the aim of “increasing the dissemination of Portuguese music”. and “their valorization for the benefit of authors, artists and producers”. This value came into effect in March 2021.
In March of last year, the minimum quota returned to 25%. On March 9, in response to the Lusa agency, the Ministry of Culture recalled that “the change in the minimum quota threshold from 25% to 30% occurred in a very specific context of a pandemic”.
“Once this period has passed, the minimum quota of 25% of Portuguese music on national radio stations is in force, a measure that has proved to be very important since its creation, so much so that today, in most radio stations, the use of Portuguese music tends to to exceed, by editorial choice, the value of the quota”, he added.
At the beginning of the month, the online petition “For the increase in the mandatory minimum quota of Portuguese music on radio stations” was launched, which at 20:00 today had almost four thousand signatures, including several prominent names in the national music scene, who remind the minister that the music sector was practically at a standstill in 2020 and 2021 and that, “although 2022 was a year of resumption of normality, in no way did it manage to restore the lost income in those two years”.
“We stress that the radio is of great importance in obtaining revenue for musicians, not only because each passage generates copyright, but also because of the direct connection that exists between an artist’s exposure on the radio and his schedule of concerts around the world. alive,” they say.
For the artists, the moment chosen to give this sign of discouragement from promoting Portuguese music on the radio is “incomprehensible and unacceptable”, and it is even “stranger” to understand when the ministry itself continues to fail to meet the payment deadlines for the Garantia program Culture, “which aimed precisely at mitigating the effects of the pandemic in a sector that was completely frozen”.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Minister of Culture defended a “considered and informed reflection” on the definition of the minimum mandatory quota of Portuguese music on radio stations, stressing that the idea that there is not enough music production to fulfill it is “completely wrong”. .
Pedro Adão e Silva revealed that, “in order to have information that allows making a decision” about maintaining or changing the minimum quota of Portuguese music on radio stations, he requested “a set of information from various entities that are relevant to this matter”: associations of radios, a group of entities that manage copyright and related rights and the Regulatory Entity for Social Communication (ERC).
On March 14, Bloco de Esquerda presented in Parliament a proposal to amend the law to increase the minimum mandatory quota of Portuguese music on radio stations to 30%, criticizing the Government for having returned to a minimum limit of 25%.
Read Also: Portuguese music on the radio? Government defends “considered reflection”
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