Performing rights organizations 1 – ASCAP and BMI

What is BMI and ASCAP?  This is a pop­u­lar ques­tion that I get asked fre­quently. It’s bit detailed, so to give a qual­ity answer, it’s going to take more than one post. Hope­fully after this series is done, you will have a clear under­stand­ing on the func­tion of per­form­ing rights orga­ni­za­tions, or more com­monly called PRO’s.

Like most kids grow­ing up in the mid­dle to late 70’s, I made it point to col­lect any­thing related to KISS. I mean, KISS was the Tay­lor Swift of music back in those days (Ironic that Hard Luck Woman would be cov­ered by Garth Brooks years later). Of course the genre was rock, but com­pa­ra­ble in popularity.

I was a fanatic when it came to KISS and every piece of infor­ma­tion linked to them, was rel­e­vant. I remem­ber read­ing the vinyl record labels and won­der­ing what those funny acronyms were after the songs. BMI? ASCAP? I thought they were a spe­cial club that KISS was a part of. I was eight. What did I know?

ASCAP (Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Com­posers, Authors and Pub­lish­ers) and BMI (Broad­cast Music, Inc) are the two largest per­form­ing rights orga­ni­za­tions in the United States.  They are not related to each other (both are sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tions) but they do per­form the same ser­vices for the com­poser, song­writer, author and publisher.

So what do they do? Well, in sim­ple terms PRO’s col­lect money for your songs, on your behalf.  That’s cool.  But for what?

Let’s go back to the word per­form. Both ASCAP and BMI use this word in a broader sense than is typ­i­cal.  A per­for­mance could be radio or inter­net air­play, a live con­cert (includ­ing night clubs per­for­mances by a local act), a song on tele­vi­sion or a song you hear in a restau­rant. To enhance this point, here is ASCAP’s def­i­n­i­tion of a performance:

A pub­lic per­for­mance is one that occurs “in a place open to the pub­lic or at any place where a sub­stan­tial num­ber of per­sons out­side of a nor­mal cir­cle of a fam­ily and its social acquain­tances is gath­ered.” A pub­lic per­for­mance also occurs when the per­for­mance is trans­mit­ted by means of any device or process (for exam­ple, via broad­cast, tele­phone wire, or other means) to the pub­lic. In order to per­form a copy­righted work pub­licly, the user must obtain per­for­mance rights from the copy­right owner or his representative.

Note that PRO’s do not deal with motion pic­tures. This a dif­fer­ent sub­ject which I won’t get into now.

On your behalf, ASCAP or BMI nego­ti­ates the license (often referred to as a blan­ket license) for your songs (think of this as a per­mit) to var­i­ous per­for­mance medi­ums, includ­ing radio sta­tions, con­cert venues, tele­vi­sion, you name it.  Then, they track the per­for­mance (remem­ber that word?) based upon their nifty for­mula (more on this later) and cut you a check for your share.

Just look at it as hav­ing your own per­sonal agent (don’t con­fuse this with a book­ing agent) look­ing after the per­form­ing rights of your songs and giv­ing you money. Not a bad deal.

“Umm…Hugh  — I have a ques­tion. When do I join, who do I join, how do I join and (drum roll…) does it cost money?”

All good ques­tions. Here it goes.

1. WHEN? You should join a PRO when you have recorded songs ready to be released to the pub­lic. PRO’s like to refer to it as being “com­mer­cially released.”  This can be in a dig­i­tal for­mat or in a fixed for­mat, such as a CD.
2. WHO? Which PRO you join is up to you. There are min­i­mal dif­fer­ences, but they all per­form the same func­tion. Which one has a bet­ter ring to it? You can only reg­is­ter with either ASCAP or BMI. You can’t be a mem­ber of both.  BTW, A BMI mem­ber is called an Affil­i­ate. ASCAP mem­bers are referred to just that, a member.
3. HOW? By going to their web­site and reg­is­ter­ing. It’s straight forward.
4. COST? To reg­is­ter with BMI as a song­writer is free. There is a $35 pro­cess­ing fee with ASCAP. Your call.

“Hugh…one more thing.  Aren’t there other PRO’s?”

Oh yeah. I pur­posely kept this post spe­cific to BMI and ASCAP as those area the two major PRO’s in Amer­ica. There is another in Nashville known as SESAC and still oth­ers that rep­re­sent artists in their spe­cific geo­graph­i­cal ter­ri­to­ries, which are for the most part, gov­ern­ment owned. Exam­ples include PRS (The UK) and BUMA/STEMRA (Nether­lands). There are also PRO’s that rep­re­sent spe­cific genre’s, such as CCLI (Chris­t­ian Copy­right Licens­ing, Inc.); which rep­re­sents the Chris­t­ian music genre.

Let’s sum­ma­rize

1. Per­for­mance right’s orga­ni­za­tions are com­monly known as PRO’s.
2. Grow­ing up in the 70’s, I thought KISS was pretty cool.
3. ASCAP and BMI are the largest PRO’s in America.
4. A per­for­mance is broadly inter­preted. It could be radio or Inter­net air­play, a live con­cert (includ­ing night clubs) a song being played on tele­vi­sion, or per­haps your wife freak­ing out on you after she found out you bought a 1959 Sun­burst Les Paul. Well, not sure ASCAP or BMI would cover that one.
5. PRO’s act as agents for your songs (Not book­ing agents – this is a dif­fer­ent func­tion). They give per­mis­sion to per­form the song by negotiating/issuing a license (often called a blan­ket license) to the var­i­ous venues, radio sta­tions, tele­vi­sion net­works etc.
6. PRO’s track the per­for­mance of a song through a nifty lit­tle for­mula that decides who get’s what.
7. When do you join? When you have a com­mer­cial release, such as CD or in dig­i­tal down­load for­mat avail­able for the pub­lic. Also, if you are per­form­ing in reg­is­tered venues.
8. There is not much dif­fer­ence between ASCAP and BMI. It’s your pref­er­ence who you want to join. They per­form the same duties.
9. You either join ASCAP or BMI. You can’t be a mem­ber of both.
10. To join, you go to ASCAP’s or BMI’s web­site and register.
11. Cost to join.  BMI is free to song­writ­ers (Pub­lish­ers are dif­fer­ent). ASCAP charges a $35 fee.
12. There are PRO’s other than ASCAP and BMI. SESAC is the other US PRO but is con­sid­er­ably smaller in com­par­i­son. PRO’s can be found all over the world and rep­re­sent those in their spe­cific regions. There are also genre-specific PRO’s such as CCLI.

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