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Programme Panellist

Tom Gray

TOM GRAY, CHAIR OF THE IVORS ACADEMY

Tom Gray’s work is broad and varied: songwriter, theatre composer, ensemble performer, librettist, singer-songwriter and scorer of television and film. Today, though, he is probably best known as one of the most high-profile creator advocates in the UK. His campaigning has led a global conversation around music rights and licensing and Tom is now the elected Chair of the Ivors Academy representing British creators.

Tom founded the #BrokenRecord campaign in 2020 which was successful in bringing about a UK parliamentary inquiry and report into the economics of the music industry. Garnering the support of over 200 of the country’s most high-profile songwriters, composers, and artists, he wrote to the Prime Minister asking for urgent intervention on behalf of creators. As a result, there is now a formal process with the British government to investigate industry interventions (the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority also completed a market study).

As a founding member of Gomez, he won the Mercury Prize in 1998, and now has over 25 years of experience on all sides of the music industry.  He scored the first series of the BAFTA-winning ‘In My Skin’ for the BBC before then moving onto a commission to write a stage adaptation for the Roald Dahl Story Company. Tom also sits on the PRS Council and regularly works with the HBF Charity on their campaigns for refugees.