ASCAP vs BMI vs SESAC vs GMR: Which PRO Do You Pick?

There are four performing rights organizations in the United States. Two of them you can join today. The other two decide whether they want you, and if you're reading this to work out which one to pick, they haven't decided yet.

That single fact removes most of the anxiety from this question. The comparison people agonize over is really just ASCAP or BMI, and the gap between them is narrower than the forum arguments suggest.

Short answer: join BMI if you want to start for free, join ASCAP if you'd rather pay $50 once and be part of a member-owned non-profit. Both pay quarterly. Both license the same venues, stations, and streaming services. Neither choice will meaningfully change what you earn.

The four, briefly

Every one of them collects the same thing: performance royalties. That's the money generated when your composition is played publicly — radio, television, a bar, a stadium, a stream. It is not the same as mechanical royalties, which are a separate pool collected by The MLC in the US, and it has nothing to do with the recording side, which is SoundExchange's lane.

Why SESAC and GMR aren't really options

SESAC has roughly 30,000 members against BMI's 1.4 million. It doesn't take applications. It recruits writers it wants, which means the path in is to build a catalog worth recruiting and wait to be approached.

GMR is smaller still — around 100 writers. It was founded in 2013 by Irving Azoff and its roster is the kind of name you'd recognize without being in the industry. It is not a tier an independent songwriter works toward in any practical sense.

Both are worth understanding so you stop treating them as choices you're failing to make. If SESAC or GMR ever becomes relevant to you, they will be the ones to start that conversation.

ASCAP vs BMI: the actual differences

Cost

ASCAP charges $50 one time, per role. You can join as a writer, as a publisher, or as both — and "both" means $50 twice, because they're two separate memberships.

BMI is free for writers and $250 for publishers.

If you're only registering as a writer, BMI costs nothing and ASCAP costs $50. If you're setting up a publisher entity too, ASCAP's $100 total comes in well under BMI's $250. That inversion is the single clearest financial difference between them, and almost nobody mentions it.

Ownership structure

ASCAP is member-owned and non-profit. Fees collected go back out to members after operating costs.

BMI has been for-profit since 2022, when it was acquired by New Mountain Capital. This is the change that generated most of the recent argument about which PRO to join. Whether it has materially affected writer payouts is not something I'd assert without data I don't have — but it is a real structural difference, and if you have a view about who should own the organization collecting your money, it's the difference that matters.

Payout timing

Both pay quarterly. ASCAP distributes roughly six months after the performance quarter closes, which is normal for the industry rather than a mark against them — performance data has to be collected, matched, and reconciled before anyone can be paid.

Do not expect money in the same quarter your song was played. That lag is structural and applies wherever you join.

Repertoire and licensing reach

Both license essentially everywhere in the US. The old shorthand — BMI leans radio and television, ASCAP leans streaming — describes historical tendencies, not exclusivity. Neither one will fail to collect from a venue or platform because of which logo is on your membership.

The rule people miss: you can only join one

You cannot be an ASCAP writer and a BMI writer at the same time. It's one or the other, and switching later means waiting out your current term and re-registering your catalog at the new society.

This is why the decision feels heavier than it is. It's a real commitment, but it's a commitment between two organizations doing substantially the same job at substantially the same quality.

What actually determines whether you get paid

Here is the part that matters more than the choice itself.

Your PRO membership is worthless until your works are registered correctly, under your IPI number, with splits that add up. All four US PROs require an IPI — it's the global identifier that ties a writer to their works, and without it your registrations can't be matched to incoming money.

I've seen far more royalties lost to unregistered works, missing IPIs, and splits that don't total 100% than to anyone picking the "wrong" PRO. A writer at ASCAP with a fully registered catalog will out-earn the same writer at BMI with half a catalog registered, every time — and the reverse is equally true.

Registration is also only one channel. Your PRO collects performance royalties. It does not collect your US streaming mechanicals — that's the MLC — and it does not collect internationally on its own beyond what its reciprocal agreements bring back. The full directory of societies shows how many separate bodies are involved once your music travels.

So: which one?

If you want a decision rule rather than a discussion:

• Registering as a writer only, and want to start free → BMI.
• Setting up a publisher entity as well → ASCAP, on cost alone.
• You care that the organization is member-owned → ASCAP.
• You're already leaning one way → go with it. The gap is not big enough to justify more research time than you've already spent.

Then spend the energy you were going to spend deliberating on getting every single work registered, everywhere it earns.

Where Davincii fits

We register your compositions with your PRO and with the mechanical and international societies that pay songwriters, and we collect what comes back. No upfront fee, you keep 100% of your copyright, and we earn a commission only on royalties we actually collect — 15% on performance, 20% on mechanicals.

We don't pick your PRO for you, and we don't need you to switch. Join whichever one you prefer, and we'll work with it.