News from ECSA: March 2024

On 18 and 19 March, ECSA held its Winter Session, uniting members from all over Europe at La Maison européenne des Autrices et des Auteurs (MEDAA) in Brussels, Belgium. The Unified Session, Committee’s meetings, Learning Lounge and General Assembly allowed us to discuss key topics such as AI, music streaming, unfair contracts, and fair remuneration of music creators. Moreover, Heidemarie Meissnitzer (Co-chair of the OMC Member States experts’ group on working conditions of artists, Permanent Representation of Austria to the EU) presented the OMC group report on "the status and working conditions of artists and cultural and creative professionals" and the state of play of its recommendations during our Learning Lounge. We look back at two inspiring days and thank all our members for coming and  joining forces. We look forward to seeing all our members again during our next ECSA Session in Paris, France, on 12 and 13 November 2024.

In late February, the European Commission (DG CNECT) launched a “Study on contractual practices affecting the transfer of copyright and related rights and the creators and producers’ ability to exploit their rights”. The study aims at examining contractual practices used in the creative sectors to transfer copyright and related rights from authors, performers and producers to contractual counterparts exploiting these rights. For authors and performers, this study will map the applicable rules at national and EU level and gather information and evidence on the contractual practices used in different sectors. It aims to assess the impact that such contractual practices have on authors and performers’ ability to be remunerated for the different exploitations of their works. ECSA is in close contact with the consortium carrying out this study and calls on composers and songwriters (and their representative organisations) to participate to this study with concrete examples of unfair contractual practices, such as buyout contracts or coercive publishing. If you are a composer or a songwriter interested in sharing your experience about contracts, please contact the ECSA team at info@composeralliance.org. ECSA and the consortium guarantee full anonymity and full confidentiality for all the data provided.

Last November, ECSA published its Fair Practice report. The results of our consultation among music creators show that they generally face insecure economic and social conditions, including precarious working conditions, low and fluctuating income, and very weak bargaining power with their contractual counterparts. For instance, only 26.7% of music creators who responded to our survey are able to earn sufficient income exclusively from composing or songwriting. 90.3% have experienced unpaid work. Only 31.3% see their career as providing a sustainable future for them. Click on the link below to find all the consultation’s results.

In late February, the European Commission (EC) sent a letter in response to the EP report for an “EU framework for the social and professional situation of artists and workers in the cultural and creative sectors”, overseen by MEP Domènec Ruiz Devesa (S&D, ES) and MEP Toine Manders (EPP, NL). In its letter, the EC Commission does not announce any legislative proposal nor any initiative related to a European status of the artist, but plans to organise a high- level roundtable (and thematic workshops), and describes a patchwork of 13 new and existing initiatives, including identifying regulatory gaps in EU rules in relation to the working situation of artists and cultural professionals, working with social partners, exchanging good practices at national level, mapping the existing definitions of cultural and creative sector professionals, updating the New European Agenda for Culture and reinforcing the social conditionality across EU programmes (including for Creative Europe). Last but not least, the EC Commission also reaffirms its commitment to ensure an effective transposition and application of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and recalls the launch of a study focused on contractual practices affecting the transfer of copyright and related rights and the creators and producers ability to exploit their rights (see above related item). 

On 13 March, the European Parliament (EP) adopted the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act with an overwhelming majority. The approval of the legislation follows after months of intense negotiations between the three EU institutions, who reached a provisional agreement last December. The final text of the regulation includes obligations for AI providers to demonstrate that they comply with EU copyright law, as well as to make available a sufficiently detailed summary of the works used to train their models and label AI manipulated content. While the AI Act is a first important step to regulate generative AI, it does not solve the numerous issues and open questions linked to the text and data mining exceptions (articles 3 and 4 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market), both in relation to their application to generative AI and for the reservation of rights set out in Article 4. The AI Act must now be formally endorsed by the Council before its official publication.