Jean-Michel Jarre – composer

The composer and pioneer of electro music Jean-Michel Jarre is the mentor to Sacem’s Council for Strategy and Innovation, or CSI, which was created last autumn at the initiative of the members of Sacem’s Board of Directors. The aim is to initiate a real reflection on innovation and to provide the best possible support to creators and publishers in a world that is moving increasingly fast.

Why is it so important to have CSI?

Technology is going to disrupt the way we create, produce and distribute our works, notably with the emergence of metaverses, i.e. different virtual worlds, or even more so with the development of artificial intelligence. We should not have a dystopian vision of the future. From generation to generation, technologies have brought us progress. But we do have to remain vigilant. So it is also the role of Sacem to focus on the ethical problems that will arise in the relationship between these technologies and creators.

What is your role as mentor?

First of all, we need to get the message across that these disruptions are not negative and that we must take advantage of them! We must also think about how to enforce and adapt authors’ rights. Sacem can play the role of mediator between the new technologies and the world of creation, which has always known how to take modern technologies and make them into something else. Because the role of artists is also to transform existing technology into something new and creative!

How do you see Sacem in the future?

Sacem is already well into the digital space. More than any other authors’ society in the world, it is ready to confront these new challenges. The Sacem of tomorrow will succeed in adapting, recognising and enforcing authors’ rights — so dear to our French and European DNA — and in spreading the message throughout the world. If we follow the right path, Sacem has a great future ahead of it, because authors’ rights, unlike other royalties, are not based on a medium, they’re based on creation … that is, on what happens between a blank page and a full page. It’s timeless, it doesn’t matter what the medium is — you can go from Gutenberg to the Internet, the creative process is always there!



– Crédit photo : EDDA –