ECSA Takes WSA Award as Composers Defend Music From AI — SkimNews
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- WSA Film Music Days ran Oct. 8–10 in Ghent, Belgium, gathering composers for three days of panels addressing AI, labor barriers, and creative workflow.
- 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' composer Simon Franglen recounted scoring with hundreds of musicians in one room and challenged whether AI could ever replicate that live emotion.
- European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA), representing more than 30,000 composers and songwriters across 57 member organizations, received the WSA Industry Award.
- ECSA president Helienne Lindvall is lobbying the EU's evolving AI Act around three demands: permission before training on copyrighted music, fair compensation for that use, and disclosure of catalogs and datasets used.
- Lindvall warned musicians curious about AI music generator Suno to 'read the terms of service,' noting anything uploaded grants the platform commercial exploitation rights 'in perpetuity.'
- Panelists including Franglen and Darrell Alexander of composer agency Cool Music argued generative tools and vanishing entry-level gigs endanger the next generation of composers.
- Beyond AI, composers like Daniel Pemberton ('Slow Horses') and Paris Hurley ('The Chronology of Water') championed project-specific 'sound banks' to build distinctive sonic palettes — Pemberton likening theirs to 'a synthesizer with presets that no one else has.'
Why it matters: ECSA is now formally shaping EU AI Act language around three concrete demands — permission, compensation, and disclosure — putting 30,000+ European composers directly into a regulatory fight, while Lindvall's blunt Suno warning exposes that musicians uploading work today are already ceding perpetual commercial rights under those terms.
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