FAQs

The Ivors Academy is the UK’s professional association for songwriters and composers. Founded in 1944, we champion, support and promote songwriters and composers from every genre, discipline and background.

Find out more about us.

The Ivors Academy office is at 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE.

Membership of The Ivors Academy is for songwriters and composers aged over 18.

We partner with a range of companies to celebrate and support songwriters and composers at every stage of their careers. Find out more.

Early Career membership is for for music creators aged 18-24, in Higher or Further Education, or have graduated in the last 3 years.

Standard membership is for songwriters and composers starting their career or experiencing growing levels of success.

Professional membership is for established songwriters and composers who are voting members of PRS or an equivalent Performing Rights Organisation (PRO), or earn an equivalent income or more from their songwriting or composing work.

We offer joint membership with the Musicians’ Union, Music Producers Guild or the Qube studios who have their own eligibility criteria.

Early Career membership costs £52 a year in one payment or you can pay £4.67 a month (£56 a year).

Standard membership costs £95 a year in one payment or you can pay £8.25 a month (£99 a year).

Professional membership costs £171 a year in one payment or you can pay £14.58 a month (£175 a year).

All prices include VAT.

If you are aged 18-24, in Higher or Further Education, or have graduated in the last 3 years you can join as an Early Career member at a discounted rate of £52 a year in one payment or you can pay £4.67 a month (£56 a year).

Joint membership with the Musicians’ Union, Music Producers Guild or Qube studios provides more benefits at discounted rates.

If you face financial barriers preventing you from joining The Ivors Academy, you can apply for a membership bursary.

The bursary is provided by The Ivors Academy Trust from a fund bequeathed by the late composer and creators’ rights campaigner David Ferguson.

Your membership starts from the date we receive your first payment.

If you pay by debit or credit card we will receive your payment immediately and you will receive a welcome email..

If you pay by Direct Debit, it takes a little longer before we receive your payment and before your membership becomes active.

If you join us before the 16th of a given month, your first payment will be collected on the 28th of that month, when you will become an active member. If you join after the 16th of the month, your first payment won’t be collected until the 28th of the following month, and so your membership will not begin until then.

If you have recently joined us and chose to pay by Direct Debit, and would like to access membership services and member events before your membership becomes active, please contact membership@ivorsacademy.com

Please note that the insurance offered as part of our membership package cannot be used before your membership is live and the first payment has been received.

All memberships last for 1 year and are automatically renewed annually.

There are options to pay in 1 or monthly instalments.

Joint membership is available for Direct Debit and Stripe Credit Card payments but excludes PRS for Music membership payments.

Joint membership is not available in conjunction with any other discount or offer. Early Career memberships are excluded from the joint membership offer.

Joint membership is only available on renewal of your current IA membership or when joining The Ivors Academy with an existing full price MU, MPG or The Qube membership.

Members must have a full price membership of either the IA, MU, MPG or The Qube to qualify for a joint membership. Members will receive an immediate 25% discount off the second membership but will also be eligible for an ongoing 25% discount off the full price membership upon annual renewal of that membership.

Currently, the joint membership offer is only in conjunction with members of the Musicians’ Union, the Music Producers Guild and The Qube.

Visit the Joint Membership page for full details of the offer.

Membership of the Academy works on an annual basis. You can pay your annual membership fee over instalments but there will always be an annual renewal date when your membership will either automatically renew or you will need to pay for another year’s membership, depending on the option you have chosen.

You will be notified 1 month in advance of renewal that your renewal date is approaching. On the renewal date you will be notified that payment has been taken.

If you cancel your membership, your membership will expire at the next renewal date and you are not entitled to a refund on any subscription paid. To cancel you must give us written notice: membership@ivorsacademy.com.

If you cancel within the first 14 day period of your membership, your statutory rights apply, and we will refund your full membership fee, as long as you have not taken advantage of any membership benefits within the 14 day period.

If you pay via Direct Debit and do not wish to renew your membership, you are required to give us written notice of this at-least 15 days before your next payment by direct debit to allow enough time to stop your next payment.

If you have outstanding membership fees due to the Academy, we reserve the right to suspend your membership and all membership benefits, including access to the legal service and your insurance coverage.

An Ivor Novello Award is an award which recognises creative excellence in contemporary songwriting and composition. At its core is the principal of peer recognition as award categories are decided by music creators working in the particular award category’s field.

First presented in 1956 an Ivor Novello Award is named in honour of Ivor Novello, Britain’s most successful and distinguished theatrical composer at the time.

The statuette, designed in 1955 by Hazel Underwood, is a representation of Euterpe, the Greek muse of singing and lyric poetry. The solid bronze statuettes are cast and hand finished in the UK and weigh 5lb, 3oz each.

The Ivors with Amazon Music is the annual awards ceremony when Ivor Novello Awards are presented to recognise and celebrate creative excellence by British and Irish songwriters and screen composers. It is the Academy’s oldest ceremony, having taken place every year since 1956.

Further details about the current presentation of awards at The Ivors can be found here.

Central to what makes it so special, an Ivor Novello Award is a peer-recognition award at heart. The nominated award categories are judged by individual panels of established songwriters and screen composers, with the exception of PRS for Music Most Performed Work which is a statistical category based on data held by the award’s title sponsor, PRS for Music. The gift of the Academy awards are chosen by the Awards Committee, a sub-committee of The Ivors Academy Board, which is also exclusively populated by songwriters and screen composers.

The Ivors Classical Awards is the awards ceremony at which Ivor Novello Awards are presented to celebrate classical British and Irish composers and sound artists. Founded in 2003, The Ivors Classical Awards were known as the British Composer Awards until 2019 and The Ivors Composer Awards until 2022.

Central to what makes it so special, an Ivor Novello is a peer-recognition award at heart. The nominated award categories are judged by individual panels of established classical composers, sound artists and practitioners within contemporary new music. The gift of the Academy awards are chosen by the Awards Committee, a sub-committee of The Ivors Academy Board, which is also exclusively populated by songwriters and composers.

In 2023, The Ivors Academy re-launched The Ivors Composer Awards as The Ivors Classical Awards to celebrate creative excellence in composition for contemporary classical and sound art.

The Academy is seeking to establish The Ivors Jazz Awards in 2024 as part of a programme of awards and recognition to celebrate composers and songwriters. A stand alone ceremony celebrating jazz will give greater profile to British and Irish jazz composers and musicians.

Any new jazz compositions that would previously have been entered for consideration into The Ivors Composer Awards 2023 will be eligible for the new Jazz ceremony when it is announced.

The Ivors is when Ivor Novello Awards are presented to celebrate British and Irish written songs and original music composed for feature films, video games and television broadcasts.

The Academy presents a second awards ceremony, The Ivors Classical Awards, where Ivor Novello Awards celebrate classical composition and sound art. Entries for this ceremony open in May. To ensure your music receives appropriate peer review please wait and enter your music into this ceremony instead.

The overriding criteria for Ivor Novello Award consideration is that the songwriter or composer is a British or Irish national. For some categories residency also counts and in these instances you need to have been ordinarily resident in the UK during the entire award year. This is because a founding principal of the award was to celebrate British and Irish songwriting and composing talent.

For our competitive musical work categories, the work itself must have at least 33.3% British or Irish writing interest to qualify and have received a commercial release or UK premiere performance within the award year. Each ceremony and award category has differing requirements so please read the Rules & Guidelines for either The Ivors or The Ivors Classical Awards before starting to submit a work.

You need to be an active member (Early Career, Standard or Professional) to enter the Rising Star Award with Amazon Music, which is presented each year at The Ivors.

You do not need to be a member to enter any of our other award categories.

Ivors Academy members can receive free or discounted entry. Please see further details under ‘Are there any discounts available?’.

Yes. Anyone can enter an eligible submission for consideration including the songwriter or composer themselves.

There is an administration fee to enter a work into our nominated categories. This is levied to cover administration costs only. The amount differs depending on the ceremony so please read the Rules & Guidelines for either The Ivors or The Ivors Classical Awards before starting to submit a work.

The Rising Star Award with Amazon Music, which is presented each year at The Ivors, is free to enter. You must be an active member of The Ivors Academy. Membership bursaries are offered by The Ivors Academy Trust should there be a financial barrier to joining the Academy. Further information about this can be found here.

The administration fee may be waived or discounted if the entrant is a member of The Ivors Academy.

Professional members can enter two works for free and can receive a 50% discount on the administration fee on a third work. Standard or Early Career members can enter one work for free and can receive a 25% discount on the administration fee on two further works.

Membership must be active at the point of entry. Entrants should contact the Awards Team to check membership status and receive their relevant discount code before completing their entry and follow our Guide to using Academy Member Discount.

Membership bursaries are offered by The Ivors Academy Trust should there be a financial barrier to joining the Academy. Further information about this can be found here.

Yes.

There is a limit of three works by the same songwriter or songwriting partnership that can be entered into categories Best Album, Best Contemporary Song and Best Song Musically and Lyrically in any one year.

Where the same songwriter or songwriting partnership has released multiple albums or songs across the year the Academy encourages entrants to choose those which demonstrate the highest level of songwriting craft for consideration.

There is a limit of three works by any one composer that can be entered into Best Original Film Score, Video Game Score and Television Soundtrack in any one year.

Where a composer has scored across more than three films, games or broadcasts in any one year the Academy encourages entrants to choose those which demonstrate the highest level or compositional craft for consideration.

Yes, as long as you are still under 25.

No. Works which have previously been entered for Ivor Novello Award consideration (at either of our ceremonies: The Ivors or The Ivors Classical Awards) cannot be re-entered for the Awards.

The music must, as a minimum, be available to stream or purchase from all of the following major digital music service providers: Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. The music may also be available to buy or stream in other formats.

The Ivor Novello Award for Best Album recognises long play albums, not extended plays. Albums in this context are defined as over 25 minutes or more than four songs.

No. The album must contain at least 75% original material; ‘original’ in this context is defined as a song copyright not previously released in the UK.

The ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code) is an internationally recognised reference number for the identification of musical works.

The ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is an internationally recognised reference number to identify recorded music tracks and music videos. Each ISRC code identifies a specific unique recording and can be permanently encoded into a product as a kind of digital fingerprint.

Your work will be assigned an ISWC by the relevant royalty collection society (PRS for Music in the UK) when it is correctly registered.

PPL are the sole appointed agency for generating ISRCs in the UK. The recording will be assigned a code at the point of registration.

Yes. Recordings that have an ISRC and ISWC will automatically go through to judging (if they fulfil all other criteria).

We expect commercial recordings to have been assigned with both codes so the income generated by the musical work and recording is tracked and distributed correctly. The awards recognise songs and albums commercially released in the previous calendar year and as such there is an expectation they have been registered correctly at the relevant royalty collection society.

Recordings entered for the awards that do not have an ISRC and ISWC will need to provide evidence that the process for obtaining an ISRC and ISWC has commenced.

No. A song may only be submitted into either Best Contemporary Song or Best Song Musically and Lyrically and not both categories.

You should consider each category’s criteria and enter the song into the category they feel best reflects the songwriting. If in doubt, please contact the Awards Team for clarification. The Academy reserves the right to transfer a song from either category.

Please follow this link.

Yes. Titles exhibited theatrically as well as those distributed via VoD platforms are eligible.

The film must be 40mins or greater to meet our definition of a feature film.

No. You can only enter a musical work into one category in any given year.

If the music has been especially written to score the feature film, game or television broadcast it should be entered into the screen categories so it is judged by screen composers and reviewed in the context of the music against the visual material.

For The Ivors Classical awards, the work’s contribution template can downloaded here.
For The Ivors, the game cue sheet can be downloaded here.
For The Ivors, the song’s contribution template can be downloaded here.

An extension of an existing game is not eligible for consideration as it is not the first time the game was commercially released to the UK general public.

The game must have been commercially released for the first time in the UK between 1 January and 31 December 2023. If the original platform version wasn’t released in the UK and the new platform version is, then it is eligible.

If the original platform release was commercially released in the UK then the game is ineligible and should have been submitted for consideration at The Ivors in the year of original release.

We campaign to protect and advance our members’ rights, lobbying Governments, the music industry and other influential decision-makers.

Find out what we are campaigning for.

On our Contact Us page, you’ll find all the details to contact us by email, phone or post.

If you have questions about joining please contact our membership team: membership@ivorsacademy.com

Copydan Writing (Copydan) is a collection management organisation that specialises in text and sheet music. They negotiate agreements regarding copying with educational institutions and private and public businesses. These agreements with Copydan allow their customers to legally copy text and sheet music material, ensuring that rights holders receive remuneration for the copies made. 

As this right does not exist in UK law, PRS or MCPS does not cover this specific use of music. Copydan has requested that The Ivors Academy (the trading name for BASCA: the British Association for Songwriters, Composers and Authors) distribute the royalties on their behalf. 

The Ivors Academy is not a collection society but acts as an agent for Copydan Writing in the UK.

Royalties are due to songwriters and composers whose works have been reproduced in Denmark by educational institutions and private and public businesses since 2015. Copydan supply The Ivors Academy with this information alongside the funds based on their own methods of measuring and allocating royalties to rightsholders.

These rightsholders may or may not be members of The Ivors Academy, and we make the same efforts to contact rightsholders regardless of whether they are members or not.

You will have heard from us if you are a member of The Ivors Academy and are due any Copydan royalties. However, this is an ongoing agreement with Copydan, so if you have not earned any royalties to date, you may in the future. 

If  you are not a member of The Ivors Academy, and have not heard from us, but believe you may be due royalties from Copydan over the last five years, please get in touch at copydan@ivorsacademy.com

The Ivors Academy processes distributions in two phases, one in July of the same year of receipt from Copydan and another in January of the following year if there are still balances to pay out.

The Ivors Academy applies an administration fee to all the Copydan royalties payments it makes to rightsholders. For rightsholders who are not members of The Ivors Academy, this administration fee is 10%. For rightsholders who are members of The Ivors Academy, this administration fee is reduced to 8%.

This administration fee covers our expenses to distribute the funds, including the resources required to identify rightsholders who are due funds, contact them and ensure we have all required financial information.

Please note this fee is changing from January 2025: The member administration fee will be 10% and the non-member administration fee 15%.

Alongside the funds, Copydan provides The Ivors Academy with a breakdown of the royalties due to rightsholders. Sometimes this information specifies for which works and sometimes only the rightsholder. We cross-reference this information against various databases – primarily our membership database and with PRS for Music. We also carry out desk research to identify rightsholders, contact them and confirm the correct bank account information to send funds to.

We do this regularly throughout the year so that if there are any rightsholders we were unable to contact initially, we have made efforts to contact them and ensure their royalties are paid.

It is The Ivors Academy’s responsibility to take all reasonable endeavours to contact the rightsholders who are due royalties payments in order to ensure their royalties are paid to them. We report details of these efforts back to Copydan; if after three years we are unable to contact the recipients then funds due to them become non-distributable revenue which the Academy is only entitled to use on activities which will serve the general best interest of songwriters and composers in the UK.

Depending on how you manage your own accounting and tax returns, you may need to raise an invoice to account for the income you’ve received for your Copydan royalties. In the first instance, please contact your accountant for advice on this if you have one.

If you need to raise an invoice for VAT purposes, please raise this with zero-rated VAT to:

Copydan Writing, Bryggervangen 8, 2.sal, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

Danish VAT number: DK 18463504

You must include the following statement: “This supply is subject to the reverse charge.”

Send this invoice to copydan@ivorsacademy.com or by post to The Ivors Academy, 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE. Do not send your invoice directly to Copydan.