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France has kept its sales up because we have a very active local music market and the musicals have been a big boost in that . I receive the french charts every week and the "albums sales" and the "french albums sales" are almost identical for the top 20 . Biggest album sales are always french products (exept for Celine Dion but only when she sings french songs) . It could have to do with the 40% on the radio but I think it has more to do with the tradition of french songs for which the lyrics are very important .The audience wants to understand the words . This audience as well is not just the youngsters and it's less affected by copying and downloading (not a lot of french songs to download anyway).Genres like hip hop were more affected by copying and when you look at the top 50 for the first 2 quarters of 2002 there are no rap albums (Mc Solaar is there but he touches a larger audience than just the hip hop public) . I've heard stories of guys coming out of a supermarket with one rap album that had just been released and a trolley (is it correct?) full of blank CD's . the fact the majors are only targeting younger audiences (who are not very stable and used to copying and downloading) might be a reason of the market going down in other countries .
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