“Every time I’m here I shed tears, I’m just so moved and so grateful to be part of this community.”
If you’re wondering why the Ivors Academy needs another awards ceremony, barely four months after its main event (the Ivor Novello Awards – aka the Ivors), well, as usual Raye had the answers.
The British singer-songwriter is no stranger to the winner’s podium these days, of course — she was even honored for her advocacy for songwriters at last year’s Variety Hitmakers event. But it is what she did with her platform at the BRITs and the Ivors that put her back in the spotlight at the inaugural Ivors Academy Honours Ceremony on Thursday, held at London’s Intercontinental Park Lane hotel.
Her tireless advocacy for songwriters to be better compensated for their craft recently won a major victory, when — as part of the U.K. government’s streaming remuneration working group — the three major labels agreed to pay a £75 ($100) per diem fee and expenses for songwriters attending their writing sessions, answering a call she first made in her Ivors acceptance speech in 2024.
“I don’t want to take more credit than is due,” she said of that triumph as she collected an award for her advocacy. “I know I’m being extremely annoying in all of my speeches, but… as long as God gives me a microphone to accept [an award] on a stage, I promise to keep fighting the good fight.
“A really important next step is that we get together to eliminate the shadows in our contracts and the grey areas in which manipulation is allowed to occur,” she added, calling for writers to “stop fighting against each other and turn the good fight to the record labels that are going to have to understand that we’re not going to stop until songwriters are correctly compensated for their songs.
“We need transparency,” she stressed, before quipping: “I’m pissing everyone off and I’m really not trying to do that – I just care about these things.”
Jon Platt (left) with Richard Branson. They didn’t call him “Big Jon” back in the day for nothing… (Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images for The Ivors Academy)
Dave Benett/Getty Images for The Ivors Academy
And this new addition to the Ivors programme, introduced by Academy bosses Roberto Neri and Tom Gray, is very much for people who care about those things – specifically compensation and respect for songwriters. Or, as another of the night’s winners, Sony Music Publishing CEO and chairman Jon Platt called it, people who go around “pissing people off and loving every minute of it.”
In his speech, Platt noted that he declines most awards that are offered to him but that, “When a songwriter organization reaches out, it’s a bit different. It’s not just an award, it’s an honor to be recognized by an Academy that fights so hard on behalf of songwriters.”
Platt – whose award was presented by Beyoncé co-writer Carla Marie Williams – was one of the few high-profile American execs to make the trip over (although he gave it a strong endorsement, noting: “Every time you go to an Ivors event, you think, ‘How can it top what you saw the last time?’ But already tonight is doing that”), but there was a strong turnout from UK publishers, songwriters, producers, labels, management companies and trade bodies to support the new event.
In recent years, the Ivors have transitioned from cosy industry bash to a high-profile magnet for A-list talent: U2, Bruce Springsteen, Brandon Flowers and Charli XCX all attended this year’s event.
But aside from Raye, artist-poet Kae Tempest and a hilarious presentation speech from Alison Moyet, the Ivors Academy Honours concentrated mainly on those behind the scenes.
So other winners included Catherine Manners, founder of classical music agency and publisher Manners McDade, and Sir Chris Bryant MP, one of the drivers of that government working group, who declared: “Every single songwriter is a miracle worker – and miracle workers should be paid properly”.
There were emotional scenes as a posthumous award for SESAC VP of international John Sweeney, who passed away earlier this year, was collected by his daughter May; while MOBO Group CEO and founder Kanya King, earned a standing ovation as she read a letter to her younger self and talked of her “challenging year”, having been diagnosed with cancer.
The headline act, however, also provided the light relief as Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, ran through a greatest hits of anecdotes from his time in the music industry, including fighting an obscenity laws court case over the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks” album; passing out while smoking dope with Peter Tosh; and helping a naked Keith Richards avoid an angry, gun-toting husband whose wife had been dallying with the Rolling Stones guitarist.
Branson’s award was presented by one of the acts he signed to his Virgin Records label, Peter Gabriel, who spoke affectionately of Branson’s “indelible impression on music and on the way music is made both here and around the world – by supporting the new, the rebellious and the outsiders, Virgin helped shaped British and then the world’s music”.
“We had a blast with our time in the music industry,” Branson told Variety ahead of the ceremony. “We were there at such a great time, when an independent record company could sign a band like Culture Club or the Sex Pistols and make a real difference.”
Virgin began as a curated mail order retail business (“So the people who were buying the music knew that the people selling the music knew what they were talking about”), before expanding into the Virgin Megastores chain. He then launched recording studios and a record label before later forays into radio (Virgin Radio) and the live business (the V Festival).
In every sector, he disrupted the established order, no more so than when he built the independent Virgin Records off the back of Mike Oldfield’s mega-selling “Tubular Bells” album.
“We didn’t deliberately think, ‘How can we be different?’” he said, in the bar of the Shoreditch branch of one of his latest ventures, Virgin Hotels. “We were just young – we were the same age as our artists and we did it our way! We were having a lot of fun and we quite enjoyed it if the establishment attacked us for signing the Sex Pistols, or prosecuted us for the word ‘bollocks’ – it just helped build the reputation of Virgin. People like the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Janet Jackson signed to us because we took on the establishment. We put the artists on the map and therefore put Virgin on the map.”
Branson sold Virgin Records to EMI in 1992 (“A gut-wrenching day for us all”) and confesses he no longer keeps up with the day-to-day minutiae of the record industry, or even the fate of the Virgin music brand, which lives on under Universal Music.
“I know the artists are having a tough time,” he said. “Some of the record companies seem to be doing very well but sadly it doesn’t seem to have those independent [companies]. When we were building our label, there was also Chrysalis, Jive, Island – it was a very exciting time for artists having all those independent companies competing and willing to step in when a major company didn’t. It sounds like that’s been lost somewhere today.”
But, despite the thrill of being amongst many old friends and colleagues at the Ivors Academy Honours ceremony, he said he doesn’t miss the music industry.
“I’d be a sad person if I said I missed anything, because my life has been so full,” he said. “I have massive happy memories from the days we were in the music industry, but I’m not somebody that will dwell on the past – I just look positively forward to the future.
“I don’t think it’s any less fun running some of the other companies,” he added. “But there was something about the music industry, it had a little more of the icing on the cake.”
And that serves as the perfect description of the Academy’s latest venture: The Ivors may remain the crème de la crème of songwriter awards ceremonies, but the Ivors Academy Honours were well worth the extra slice.
