The streaming revolution is changing the way film composers get paid—and exposing the flaws of a system where big names farm their scores out to “ghost composers.”
21st-century Hollywood, as a composer for an Emmy-winning cable series put it, “feels like an underground, a real pimp situation.” He talked about long hours, low pay, and working under a martinet “lead composer”—his boss—who delegated the actual work of writing and recording.
Much of the resentment traces back to film composing’s biggest open secret: Many of its brightest stars do not, in fact, write the music they are celebrated and remunerated for. That work, or a good bit of it, is delegated to others. Sometimes those others are credited as “additional composers,” but often they are gig workers, effectively, who receive modest pay and no credit.
If their contributions end up being credited and the pay is decent, the participants can be quite happy. They can pay the rent. They might someday rise to the level of lead composer, as did John Powell, Henry Gregson-Williams, and Lorne Balfe, brilliant film scorers all, coming out of Zimmer’s behemoth Remote Control studio in Santa Monica.
Burwell, who is 67, has a sagelike aura.
“Half the income that the composer used to get comes from royalties,” the Hollywood composer told me, “and now streaming is throwing that way off-balance.” The open letter to the PROs said that streaming releases ultimately pay just 5 to 10 percent as much as comparably budgeted theatrical projects. “Netflix presents itself as a tech company, not an entertainment company,” Burwell said, echoing a broadly held sentiment.
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