In 2004 the Office of Fair Trading asked the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) to stop providing guidance about commission fees paid to composers, saying it was anti-competitive. To get around this (and, perhaps, illustrate the absurdity of the request) BASCA have instead published a table of the average amount paid to composers writing for various forces both inside and outside the UK between January 2005 and December 2009. Whilst BASCA have protected themselves by pointing out that the information is not to be taken as advice as to what to charge, the table is, nevertheless, both extremely helpful (if you are lucky enough to be receiving commissions) and interesting (if you are hoping to). The full breakdown can be found on the BASCA website.
The table is best read in conjunction with the Commissioning Survey Report, which provides useful further analysis. For example, it shows that the majority of commissions that those questioned reported were for more traditional categories such as chamber music, orchestral and choral works. The number of commissions drops off rapidly with categories such as symphonic wind ensemble, brass band, ‘electronica’, jazz band and jazz orchestra. This surprised me – I’ve always been led to believe that there was a great deal of commissioning activity for these sorts of groups – and so wonder whether the report is skewed towards composers working in traditional genres. I also notice that large scale electronic music, ‘Electronica (A)’, only had two respondents, so the relatively high commissions fees per minute (£742.05) paid in this category could easily be a statistical anomaly.
Perhaps most interesting of all is that BASCA find that the average non-UK commission is £10,431, the average UK commission only £4,579, whilst tantalisingly saying that the report ‘does not investigate why this may be the case.’ It may simply be that commissioners abroad pay more money to composers, though I suspect not. The proportion of commissions in the report that derive from outside the UK was only 17%. This reflects the bias of the report towards UK respondents (it’s hardly likely that 83% of worldwide commissions derive from the UK). Following this logic I wonder, therefore, whether the commissions received from outside the UK were actually for British composers. So it would make sense that these figures would be higher, since a composer with an international profile is likely to command higher fees.