Coercion

Coercion battleground moves to Europe.

There aren’t many battles that have gone on as long as the one that has come to be known as "Coercion".

When the Association of Professional Composers was formed some 30 years ago, the issue was at the top of its first agenda. By the time the APC joined BASCA and the Composers Guild to create the Academy, far from being resolved, the problem of coercion was getting worse. It has become the media composer’s version of the 100 Years War.

For the uninitiated, coercion is where broadcasters or production companies insist on an assignment of publishing rights as a condition of granting a television music commission. Pressure to assign can be subtle, or it can take the form of a bullying phone call threatening that the non-compliant composer will "never work in this industry again". It happens.

Over the last three decades just about every avenue has been explored, including negotiating with the producers, asking PRS to strengthen and enforce its own rules, as well as making representations to a variety of MPs, government officials and regulatory bodies such as Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading.

At least two Fighting Funds have been set up, with the generous donations of composers themselves going towards legal advice and the production of two carefully researched and drafted reports. However, coercion is still with us and becoming increasingly the norm in the world of television music.

In September, chairman David Ferguson, who is very much the Academy’s Henry V to the Agincourt of coercion, was in Brussels and found himself thrown together in conversation with Alain Andries of the European Competition Commission.

Andries is a lawyer and a high-powered player inside DG Competition. Not only did he quickly grasp the coercion issue and the implications for composers, he was also willing to discuss how it could be put on the EU agenda. It has long been felt that the only real prospect of success is by focussing on the anti-competitive impact, not just in relation to composers, but also for the vast majority of music publishers.

The Academy and the recently formed pan-European grouping FFACE (Federation for Film and Audiovisuals Composers in Europe) hope that this represents a chink of light at the end of a very long tunnel.