Composers Take On AI at Ghent's WSA Film Music Days

By Elena Vasquez

Simon Franglen, composer of "Avatar: Fire and Ash," asked the question hanging over this year's WSA Film Music Days: "How can that ever be replicated by AI?" He was recalling hundreds of musicians recording together. "We had hundreds of musicians in a room, pouring their emotion out in that precise second," he said.

The WSA Film Music Days ran Oct. 8–10 in Ghent, Belgium. Three days of talks, roundtables and mixers addressed composers' most pressing concerns, with generative AI at the center.

What did the industry gather around?

Strength in numbers framed the event. Composers in the U.S. and U.K. face legal barriers to unionizing and collective bargaining. The European Composer and Songwriter Alliance fills part of that gap, uniting national associations to lobby policymakers and guide young composers through contracts.

ECSA represents more than 30,000 composers and songwriters across 57 member organizations — a bloc roughly the size of a mid-sized city's population, all negotiating as one. It hosted a roundtable in Ghent and received this year's WSA Industry Award.

"There's still a long way to go and a lot of work to do," ECSA president Helienne Lindvall said in accepting the award. "But one thing is clear: We have become a voice to be reckoned with, giving composers and songwriters a seat at the table. Because, as someone once said, if you're not sitting at the table, chances are you're on the menu."

The takeaway: collective structure remains the composers' main lever.

How is ECSA fighting generative AI?

ECSA is pushing to shape the EU's evolving AI Act around three demands:

• Authorization: AI companies must get permission before using copyrighted music to train generative models.
• Remuneration: creators must be fairly compensated for that use.
• Transparency: platforms must disclose which catalogs and datasets they use.

"If we want to protect those at the heart of music creation, we must continue to defend the three fundamental principles of Authorization, Remuneration and Transparency," Lindvall said. "In other words, our art."

She had a blunt warning about AI music generator Suno: "Read the terms of service." Anything uploaded — even a quick test — grants broad rights. "You are giving them the right to use your music and exploit it commercially, without limitation, in perpetuity," she said.

The takeaway: the battlefield is the EU AI Act's fine print.

Will the next generation get a foothold?

Panelists argued AI's short-term savings come at the expense of newcomers. Generative tools now take over entry-level work, and young composers risk losing a vital first step.

"Hans Zimmer wouldn't be who he is today without ['Going for Gold']," Franglen said, referencing Zimmer's 1980s British game show gig. "We all start somewhere, and we all have our various steps. It's essential that those steps exist."

Darrell Alexander, who runs composer agency Cool Music, sees the additional-composer path as the best entry point. "It's still better to try to be an additional composer to a master," he said. "You can study and learn and see."

Adiescar Chase, acclaimed for Netflix's "Heartstopper," pushed to bring assistants onto subsequent seasons. "I told production before we started, 'Just so you know, I'm going to have an assistant this time,'" she said. "They had to trust me."

Martin Phipps ("The Crown") believes AI won't eat every job. "It's a skill in itself to prompt an AI," he said. "You need to employ someone to do that, and that somebody's got to be there, for a while anyway. Though I do know a few directors who would quite like to write the music themselves, which is a worry!"

The takeaway: mentorship pipelines are the counterweight to automation.

What craft solutions emerged?

Sound banks proved the most-shared practical tool.

On Kristen Stewart's "The Chronology of Water," Paris Hurley skipped scoring to picture entirely. She created bespoke sounds, often using her body as an instrument, then rearranged and remixed them for each section. "It would almost be a disservice to just rock up with a collection of familiar sounds," Hurley said.

"Slow Horses" composer Daniel Pemberton builds a fresh sonic palette for every project. "It's like getting a new instrument each time and working out how it works," he said. "There's a naivety to that, but also a freshness."

The bank also speeds up work on a schedule as unrelenting as "Slow Horses." "The 'Slow Horses' sound bank took a long, long time to get working," Pemberton said. "But now I've built all these sounds that are very distinctive to the show. It's like having a synthesizer with presets that no one else has."

The takeaway: proprietary sound is both artistic identity and competitive moat.

As the EU AI Act takes shape, ECSA's three principles — authorization, remuneration, transparency — will determine whether Franglen's room of hundreds of musicians remains a working reality or a memory.