Soundtrack composer Alexandre Desplat

Composer Alexandre Desplat has a number of films running at the Cannes Film Festival 2012, notably “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Rust & Bone”. He has been called a worthy successor to the French masters of film music such as Delerue, Duhamel, Jarre and Legrand. His scores for “Read my Lips/Sur me slèvres” and “The Prophet” directed by Jacques Audiard established his credibility in French Cinema. He then went on to score “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, “Birth” and “Syriana”.

His innovative voice launched Desplat as one of the most active European composers in Hollywood. He won a Cesar and the Berlinale Silver bear for his score to “The Beat my Heart Skipped” in 2006, the Golden Globe 2007 for “The Painted Veil” and received 3 nominations at the Oscars in 2007 for “The Queen”, in 2008 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and in 2009 for “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”.

Desplat will be hosting a masterclass, dubbed “A Personal History of Film Music”, at 2.30pm in the Theatre Bunuel on May 19, 2012.

ECSA, the European Composer & Songwriter Alliance, has denounced the coercion that composers face from TV and film producers in February 2012. To participate in the revenue stream, many producers are demanding the publishing rights of music – and sometimes the total copyright – before using writers. In the above video, John Groves talks in detail about the issue, and how the industry has come to this situation.

“People are scared,” he said during the conference, pointing to the difficulty ECSA had in obtaining information from composers about the issue. He also noted that some composers have now started seeing payments for the rights, although it looks as though this comes from the overall budget anyway. Read the rest of this entry…

Strictly Confidential, one of Europe’s leading music publishers, represents the music of the film “The Artist” worldwide, as part of its publishing collaboration with Thomas Langmann’s French production company LA PETITE REINE.

After notable international successes with films such as “Asterix & Obelix at the Olympics” and “Mesrine”, “The Artist” has been beating records for La Petite Reine in the number of nominations – and notably for music. A triple award winner at the Golden Globes, “The Artist” has now been nominated in ten categories at the Oscars, Césars and picked up awards at the Baftas. The interest has caused the movie to be re-released in Belgium, notably.
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The New York Post is reporting that the smallest of the US performing rights societies, SESAC, is up for sale again. Whereas the asking price was $700 million some time ago, it has now reportedly dropped to $500 million. This sets the price at about ten years of annual profit, currently $50 million  year.

SESAC is privately owned and home to a number of high-profile songwriters such as Bob Dylan. One of the difficulties of selling it is that its natural partners, such as major labels, would have difficulty arguing that there isn’t a conflict of interest in representing both their commercial interest and those of rights holders. Warner has reportedly expressed interest.

But given that there is a growing trend towards integration at the level of PROs across the globe, would this not be the time for  a large body such as Germany’s Gema, Japan’s Jasrac or France’s Sacem to pitch? It would certainly benefit the flow of information and rights in both directions – a key issue in the sector.

In an unusual move but interesting move, three Nordic rights collecting societies – KODA, TONO and TEOSTO – announced at Midem 2012 that they are joining forces to share the back-end for their IT services. The goal is to reduce processing costs while meeting the needs of their respective members.

Since 2008, Denmark’s KODA and Norway’s TONO have been working together to develop shared IT systems. Now Finland’s TEOSTO has announced it will join the effort. Together, the three organizations intend to expand and accelerate the plans for developing common back-end systems. Read the rest of this entry…

The annual Midem trade fair in Cannes features a number of pitch sessions. Advertisers such as EuroRSCG and Ogilvy provided briefings for upcoming campaigns.

On the TV front, music supervisors for NBCUniversal were overwhelmed by the response to one pitch they posted when over 2,000 tracks flooded their inbox. With a choice like that, they eventually found what they were looking for. But supervisor Alicen Schneider had this to say about the incoming music pitches: “a large number of the postings contained more songs than were feasible to review given the sheer number that awaited us and were also from genres that a little research would have shown are not right for any of our current shows (gospel, children’s songs, novelty….).”

The message is clear. Don’t waste the supervisors’ time. They are not going to change the brief due to the fact that you didn’t adhere to it! It doesn’t work that way round! One Pitch session is still open: agency Grey is looking for music for a worldwide campaign for a pain-killer. Check the details here. Deadline January 25. Midem will be held between January 28 and 31.