Quebec’s Bill 109 lets the province require Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services to carry a minimum share of original French-language music.
The law was sanctioned on 12 December 2025 as chapter 38 of Quebec’s 2025 statutes. It contains no quota figure. Those come by regulation, the law takes effect on dates the government sets, and Quebec votes on 5 October 2026.
The part that reaches independent releases first is quieter: a power to set metadata standards for counting French-language songs. That lands on whoever delivers the file.
What the law lets Quebec regulate
Article 20 gives the government six regulation-making powers. Four matter to anyone releasing music:
- Criteria for what counts as “original French-language cultural content” (20.1).
- The quantity or proportion of that content platforms must offer (20.2).
- Discoverability duties, “notably recommendation, highlighting or display” (20.4).
- Metadata standards for French-language content (20.5).
Music can get different rules from film and TV. Platforms meeting criteria set by regulation must register with the Culture ministry (Art. 6) and can negotiate “substitute measures” lasting up to four years (Arts. 21 and 22).
A new Bureau de la découvrabilité inside the ministry enforces it. A company ignoring a ministerial order faces a C$15,000 administrative penalty, and each day counts as a separate breach (Arts. 49 and 51).
The platforms say they cannot see language
DiMA means the Digital Media Association, the lobby group for Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. Beyond calling rigid quotas “ill-suited to the online environment” (Stuart Dredge, Music Ally), it raised a technical objection, quoted by Daniel Tencer at Music Business Worldwide on 28 November 2025:
“International music metadata standards do not require a song to be identified by nationality or language, meaning streaming services do not have a way to identify at scale which songs could or should be classified as Canadian, Québécois or French-language.”
That is accurate. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the XML standard distributors use to deliver releases to stores. Its ERN data dictionary gives every sound recording a LanguageOfPerformance field (an ISO 639-2 code) and an IsInstrumental flag. Both have a cardinality of 0-1, which means optional.
Article 20.5 is Quebec’s reply: the power to make that data mandatory for content it wants counted.
Why the starting point is so low
- Quebec logged 31.9 billion on-demand streams in 2025, up just 3%, according to the Institut de la statistique du Québec (11 August 2026, Luminate data).
- Quebec artists took 7.1%, stuck between 7% and 8% since 2022.
- Of the 10,000 most-streamed songs in Quebec in 2023, only 8.5% were francophone, Radio-Canada reported (Fanny Bourel, 12 December 2025).
Any quota lifts only tracks a platform can identify. A recording with an empty language field cannot be counted, whatever language it is sung in.
What to fix in your catalogue now
Tag language per recording
Set the code on every track, not just the release. A French album with one English-language feature needs a different code on that track, because platforms recommend recordings, not albums.
Flag instrumentals
An instrumental with no language code looks identical to a vocal track with missing data. Set the flag so it is excluded on purpose, not by accident.
Give French versions their own ISRC
The law treats “original French-language” content separately from content “available in a French version.” A French adaptation of an English single may fall in the second bucket, so deliver it as a separate recording with its own ISRC and language code.
Watch the language-versus-origin question
As written, the test is French-language expression, not Quebec origin, which puts francophone releases from Paris, Brussels or Dakar in the same potential pool. Hélène Messier of the AQPM, Quebec’s media producers’ association, has asked for obligations favouring “specifically Québécois” content, Radio-Canada reported, so the criteria could narrow. Mixed French-English tracks are the other open question.
The distribution angle
Ask your distributor: is language of performance a required upload field, or optional? InterSpace Distribution delivers through DDEX, where that field travels with each recording to every store.
Related: DDEX MEAD and Spotify pitching, how Canada’s 5% streaming levy died before paying out, and France’s most French charts in 20 years.
