BarcelonaIn the last century, in 1998, the language policy law ruled that radio stations had to offer a minimum of 25% of their songs sung in Catalan. This protection against market trends never ended up being effective, because the different companies managed to negotiate with the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia (CAC) adaptations to the letter that allowed them to keep percentages well below this 25%, arguing that the ‘offer of music of his style did not allow him to fulfill it. Now the audiovisual regulator wants to break with the permissiveness of the previous teams and has conspired to enforce the percentage. The councilors have met and have taken this agreement unanimously, which sets an adaptation period of one year, before it is mandatory to broadcast one in four subjects in Catalan, starting from January 1, 2026.
In the resolution voted this Thursday, the CAC plenary notes “the growth in the production of music sung in Catalan, professionalized and diversified in styles and genres, which must guarantee an adequate presence of songs produced by Catalan artists in the music program sung by audiovisual communication service providers and that, at least, 25% are interpreted in Catalan or Aranese”.
These are the adaptations that were made in 2023 for different private broadcasters:
The Council explains that it has taken the decision after gathering the opinions of the music production sector and the audiovisual sector. For a few months, the country’s music industry has been fighting to be able to enforce this provision of the linguistic standardization law of almost thirty years ago. In the last Music Yearbook presented by the magazine Enderrock the money that artists and record labels in Catalan had stopped receiving due to these systematic adaptations was estimated at more than 200 million euros.
Source: www.ara.cat
