Broadcast Music Incorporated
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) is a performing rights organization. It collects license fees on behalf of its songwriters, composers, and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.
BMI was founded by radio executives in 1939 to provide competition in the field of performing rights, to assure royalty payments to writers and publishers of music not represented by the existing performing right organizations, and to provide an alternative source of licensing for all music users.
A non-profit-making entity, BMI was the first performing rights organization in the United States to represent songwriters of blues, country, jazz, rhythm & blues, gospel, folk, Latin and, ultimately, rock & roll.
BMI issues licenses to various users of music, including:
- television and radio stations and networks;
- new media, including the Internet and mobile technologies such as ringtones and ringbacks;
- satellite audio services like XM and Sirius;
- nightclubs, discos, hotels, bars, restaurants and other venues;
- digital jukeboxes;
- live concerts.
It then tracks public performances of its members’ music, and collects and distributes licensing revenues for those performances as royalties to the more than 300,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers it represents, as well as the thousands of creators from around the world who have chosen BMI for representation in the U.S.
BMI annually gives awards to songwriters in a number of categories [1].
