For the past six months, I’ve been working with twelve UK-based composers and a UK music agent to address the issue of ghostwriting in TV, film, and games music.
Our aim is to bring an end to this harmful practice and to establish a clear framework of best working practices for composer collaboration.
The Ivors Academy has now endorsed our initiative, launching the End Ghostwriting Pledge today — a commitment to greater transparency with productions, fair crediting for all contributors, and accurate submissions for awards consideration.
One of the main pillars of our campaign to end Ghostwriting is about awards and I am very pleased that the Ivors Academy have announced new rules for the 2026 Ivor Novello Awards:
From 2026 those entering music for award consideration will be asked to confirm that the production cue sheets provided list all composers who wrote a cue from scratch or who provided significant new creative input into an existing cue. If a composer does not include all additional writers on a production cue sheet when entering music for award consideration then they will be ineligible for consideration.
In the next few days, I’ll be sharing examples here of how successful UK composers have brought on additional writers — how they did it, and the challenges they faced.
Please sign the pledge on the Ivors Academy website. No composer should be invisible on a production.
A huge thank you to everyone in our End Ghostwriting group — this milestone wouldn’t have been possible without your passion, ideas, and commitment:
Anna Phoebe, Aisling Brouwer, Ben Foster, Daisy Coole, David Arnold, Jenna Fentimen, Jessica Jones, Nick Foster, Peter Gregson, Sam Thompson, Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist and Tom Nettleship.