BMI for Songwriters: How It Works and How to Register

BMI for songwriters means Broadcast Music, Inc., the largest US performing rights organization measured by its writer roster. It represents about 1.5 million songwriters and composers as well as over a million publishers. When your music plays on broadcast TV, US radio, in venues, or through digital streams, BMI gathers performance royalties for affiliated publishers and writers. (Our CMO directory has a quick card covering signup price, payment timing, and reciprocal partners.)

Here's the working songwriter's view of BMI: what it pays, how signup works, and what it leaves uncovered.

Bottom line: BMI collects US performance money for writers and publishers in its system. Writer membership costs nothing, but indie writers who ignore the publisher portion can miss 50% of each royalty. Full splits must accompany every song registration or payments stop.

Royalties BMI collects

Like ASCAP and SESAC, BMI collects performance royalties. A public performance of any song in its catalog produces a license fee, which BMI receives and divides between publisher and writer.

Those fees mainly come from four places:

• Radio and TV broadcasts
• Commercial locations using background music
• Performances in live venues
• Digital services, specifically the performance portion of each Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, or YouTube stream

The model relies on blanket licenses. A radio station pays BMI for permission to use anything in BMI's catalog. BMI measures real usage through samples or censuses, then allocates royalties based on those results.

What falls outside BMI

• Mechanical royalties, handled by the MLC and HFA
• Sync placements, collected by the party that approved the license
• Income from the master recording, belonging to the artist or label
• International performance, administered by foreign CMOs within their own territories
• Sound-recording neighboring rights, handled by SoundExchange in the US and overseas equivalents elsewhere

Collecting every category above in addition to BMI performance money takes either an administrator or somebody managing several registration systems.

Registration steps

Join as a writer

Anyone can apply to BMI, and writer affiliation is free. After approval, which commonly takes several weeks, you receive both a BMI affiliation and an IPI number.

Submit your application through bmi.com. Have these ready:

• Your address and legal name
• Either banking details or an address for checks
• Tax documentation, W-9 in the US or W-8BEN internationally

Open a publisher account

Writers without a publisher should create their own publishing entity. Every performance royalty assigns 50% to the publisher side. When that side has no affiliation, BMI may hold the money or pay nobody, depending on where it came from.

The process works like this:

1. Choose a publishing company name that no one else uses in BMI's database.
2. Send in its application separately from your writer signup.
3. BMI assigns the publisher an IPI number after approval.
4. Future song registrations can divide the publisher portion between that company and any additional publishers involved.

DVCI MUSIC is Davincii's BMI-affiliated publisher. We manage publisher registrations for roster writers, saving them from maintaining separate publisher accounts.

Register each work

Individual registration is required for every song through BMI's online work registration. Provide:

• The title and every alternate title, particularly when separate releases use different names
• Each writer's IPI number and BMI/ASCAP/SESAC affiliation
• Writer shares that sum to 100%
• Publisher shares that also sum to 100%
• Its performance category, such as live, recorded, or broadcast
• The ISWC code, which BMI creates during registration for a new work

Registrations commonly get held up because:

• An ASCAP co-writer reports splits there that differ from your BMI filing. Until you settle the conflict, both PROs flag it and neither sends payment.
• The publisher side was left blank, putting that money into the unmatched pool.
• Your legal name in the BMI account doesn't match the stage name a distributor supplied to streaming platforms. Fixes move slowly.

When BMI pays

BMI distributes royalties every quarter. Like ASCAP, it pays roughly 6 months after the quarter containing the performance closes. Statements offer useful detail by separating venue, radio, TV, and streaming sources.

For instance, January airplay usually reaches you in late September.

Comparing BMI and ASCAP

Their work is largely alike, and the guide to ASCAP covers the other side. The main distinctions are:

• Size. BMI's 1.5M affiliated writers outnumber ASCAP's 875K, and BMI also represents more publishers.
• Signup price. Writers join both BMI and ASCAP for free, so cost is no reason to pick one over the other. There is no publisher account for you to open, either: your PRO pays your writer share directly to you, and Davincii registers its own publisher entity on your works to collect the publisher share.
• How distributions are calculated. Each combines census data, where all plays count, with samples that use statistical extrapolation. Traditionally, BMI gives radio more weight, while ASCAP more visibly weights venue usage and venue-licensee fees. These distinctions affect the edges rather than the foundation.
• Member experience. ASCAP offers member events, writer's lounges, and advances to established writers. BMI provides comparable benefits with its own atmosphere. This comes down to taste.

For a given song, you may affiliate with just one PRO. A switch is possible, but normally has to wait for the end of your affiliation term, which is usually annual or biennial.

Davincii's BMI work

We do five things at BMI for roster members:

1. Review affiliations. We confirm that each artist's writer profile is accurate and its IPI is verified.
2. Administer publishing. Under our admin agreement, songs use DVCI MUSIC as publisher. We receive the 50% publisher portion that might otherwise stay unclaimed, retain 15%, and pay the artist 85%.
3. Register catalogs. Every work goes in with full details, including ISWC, all splits, every co-writer, and all publisher connections.
4. Resolve disputes. If an ASCAP co-writer files different splits, we work with that writer's representation to correct the record.
5. Audit royalties. Each quarter, we compare expected income against statements, identify gaps, and submit claims when usage appears without payment.

Managing this alone is reasonable for a BMI writer with a modest catalog. Once the catalog reaches 50–500 songs with ongoing streaming and sync activity, the work becomes a job.