General FAQs

Imagine that you play, on average, 6 hours of music a day in your business to create an atmosphere for your employees, your customers, or to help market your product.

That probably comes out to somewhere around:
75 different songs a day;
125 different songs a week.

If you were to negotiate with the owners of those 125 different songs to use their product, the way you use other products in your business, it would be a staggering task for you, or your business, to undertake.

That's why the Copyright Law provides for the use of music licensing organizations such as BMI. Writers and publishers give BMI permission to license performances of their works, and BMI collects license fees on their behalf from businesses which use their music, making the licensing process easier. This method allows thousands of music users to work with thousands of music creators through one organization.

It's really as simple as that. It's a cost-effective way of bringing an enormous catalog of music (more than 6.5 million musical works) into the marketplace so that you can choose the music that makes your business unique.

And because a BMI Music Performance Agreement covers you for even the most current works of our affiliated songwriters and composers, you have the right to publicly perform their newest work immediately once you've signed the agreement and paid your fee.

This keeps you and your business on top of the newest music trends

A BMI music performance agreement is a license that enables businesses to play musical works owned by the songwriters, composers, and musical publishers represented by BMI. This agreement is similar to one you might make with someone asking your permission to use your logo or business name as a promotional device.

Our agreement provides you with the right to play more than 6.5 million pieces of music. If you use music to enhance your business, a BMI Music Performance Agreement can save you the time and effort required to clear each individual piece of music you play.

A BMI agreement helps enhance your business by allowing you to perform much of the world's most popular music. Musical compositions, like other copyrighted material, are the legal property of their creators. Copyright owners have the exclusive right to perform their own musical works in public. All others must enter into a licensing agreement to perform the music.

Most BMI licenses are for an initial term of one year. Generally, licenses automatically renew for additional one-year periods unless either you or BMI give notice of cancellation.

Reporting

Your annual fee period is broken up into reporting periods. At the end of each period, we will send you a BMI Report Form to fill out. Your fees will be adjusted for the current and/or previous reporting period based on this report. Some fee adjustments are also influenced by the current Consumer Price Index which is discussed in your agreement.

Payment Process

In the absence of receiving a report from you, we will bill you an estimated fee based on past music use and what our research has shown to be your current use. It is important that you use official BMI Report Forms, that you sign your report, and that you include any change in business name, address and/or phone number on the report.

In the case of an added location, please send a letter telling us the date of the opening and the new address and phone number. If you sell or close a business, please tell us the date of sale or closing, your account number, the new owner's name, new business name and new telephone number (if known) to:

General Licensing
BMI
10 Music Square East
Nashville, TN 37203

You may telephone your BMI representative by clicking on your business type, and using the phone number you will find on the next page. To go back to the list of businesses, click here.

Much like many proprietors of eating and drinking establishments, most songwriters are small business people trying to make a living doing what they do best. While you may be familiar with many of the names and faces from the BMI repertoire who are famous songwriters as well as performers, most songwriters do not perform their own work. You may not know the names of many BMI songwriters, but you know their works. These are the writers behind the music you hear on the radio and on TV - the people who create the music that we all enjoy and use for the benefit of our businesses. Other BMI writers - such as Anita Baker, Dolly Parton, John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Brooks and Dunn, Pete Seeger, Bobby Womack, Roger Miller, Neil Young, Vince Gill, Alanis Morissette and the group R.E.M. - may be more recognizable to you. Not all songwriters are recording artists and vice versa.

BMI represents more than 375,000 copyright holders (songwriters, composers, and music publishers and their more than 6.5 million musical works) in all styles of music including:

• Rock
• Country
• Pop
• Gospel
• Classical
• R&B
• Broadway show tunes
• Latin
• Rap
• New age
• Hip-hop
• Dance

A small sample of the known artists whose work BMI represents include:

• The Beatles
• Vince Gill
• Aretha Franklin
• Shania Twain
• Brooks and Dunn
• Sheryl Crow
• Mark O'Connor
• Carole King
• Gloria Estefan
• Bobby McFerrin
• Eric Clapton
• Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds
• Miles Davis
• Mariah Carey
• Seal
• Elvis Presley
• The Beach Boys
• Boyz II Men

The BMI catalog also includes popular song by thousands of other songwriters whose names you might not know, but whose songs you recognize. For example:

1999/2000's hit "Smooth" by Itaal Shur & Robert Thomas; the classic "Baby, I Need Your Loving" by Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland; One of the most performed songs of all time "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" by Barry Mann, Phil Spector and Cynthia Weil

As BMI embarks on the next century, our purpose remains the same as it was in 1939 - to provide a competitive source of licensed music and to reward writers and publishers for their hard work. To meet this goal, we will continue to increase our communication with music users throughout the country and to advance our monitoring system through modern technology. With the help and compliance of radio, TV, businesses, and organizations, we look forward to continuing to support music in American culture. In this way BMI will insure that the "Explosion of American Music" never stops.

When you purchase a record, tape or CD, the purchase price covers your private listening right only. Once you decide to play these in public - such as in a restaurant, bar, café or telephone music-on-hold service - it becomes an additional performance of the music, which is known as a "public performance." The copyright owners of musical works have the exclusive right of public performance. Therefore, any public performances by others require permission. That's where BMI comes in. To learn more about the rights of songwriters, click here.

With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you'll be entitled to use any BMI-affiliated music.

Songwriters receive a small percentage of their income from the sale of tapes and CDs. Called "mechanical royalties," this percentage usually is less than half of a songwriter's income, with the bulk coming from "performance royalties." Because of the amount of airplay that BMI- affiliated music generates over the years, the public performance royalty fee is critical. Songwriters depend on BMI public performance revenues to enable them to make a living writing songs.

Approximately 50 to 75 percent of a songwriter's compensation is from performance royalties, an important part of which comes from commercial establishments. The greatest hits of the 60s and 70s are still some of today's most widely played songs.

More than 85% percent of all the fees paid to BMI go to the people who create the music you play, enabling them to continue writing more music for your business. The remainder of BMI revenues we receive goes toward BMI's operating costs for the collection and distribution of royalties, as well as fostering the development of future music creators through workshops, seminars, networking opportunities and other activities. BMI operates as a non-for-profit-making, tax-paying organization with the sole mission of bringing together the people who create music with the people who play music, as economically and efficiently as possible.

Some music users ask BMI how much of a profit we make from the license fees we collect. The answer is "none." Throughout our history, BMI has operated on a non-profit basis. We are firmly dedicated to giving the maximum amount of money possible to those whose rights we protect: the songwriters, composers and publishers.

Like any organization, we do have to pay our bills: salaries, rent, office supplies and all of the other necessary operating expenses. We constantly strive, however, to keep these expenses as low as possible. In 2001, the percentage of BMI revenue that went to "paying the bills" was 16%.

That means that more than 85% percent of your BMI fee goes to the people who write and publish music so that they can continue to write songs for your business.

When you see the words "All Rights Are Reserved" on a home video that you've rented or purchased, you know that playing that video before a public audience, like the customers in your business, is prohibited. The right to publicly perform a video, is not included in the rental or purchase price of a "home" video.

What you may not know is that the same restrictions apply when you purchase a tape, cd, video or hire live musicians. The purchase price covers only the consumer's private use, similar to the "home" use of "home" videos. "All Rights Are Reserved", whether labeled or not, means that the copyright owner of the music only gives you the right to listen or play their music privately, with your family or friends in your home or car. Their "Performing Right", as it's called, or right to perform their music publicly, is reserved for them. Anyone else must obtain permission.

The U.S. Copyright Law, which has recognized this "Performing Right" of songwriters, composers and publishers since 1897, is similar to other copyright and patent protection. It was designed to enable and encourage artists to continue to create by:

protecting the integrity of the work; and entitling the creator to be compensated for using their work in public by the business/organization benefiting from playing the music.

These principles are similar to those which have enabled businesses who use trademarks to protect their product. Trademarks enable companies to serve the public with quality without having to "give away" what makes their product unique. Examples of products which are trademarked are:

• Software
• Formulas for well-known beverage products
• Books and magazines
• Artwork & Photography
• Videos

BMI distributes royalties to our writers and publishers quarterly, based on the number of public performances each of their works has received from:

Radio - (BMI monitors over 500,000 hours of radio play lists including all styles and formats, even college radio)

TV - (Performance information is secured on Network, Cable and Local Television

Commercial Music Services - (the lists of music that is used in licensed services such as Muzak, PlayNetwork, IBN etc., is provided by these companies)

BMI licenses and logs approximately 100% of all the radio stations in the United States. Each quarter, BMI asks a diverse segment of these stations to list every song they play for a two or three day period. Using these results, BMI is able to determine what selection of songs are played and the frequency of their airplay on all stations.

For television or cable performances, BMI relies on the services of TV Data Corporation which supplies BMI with performance information on TV shows broadcast on Network, Local (which includes airings of syndicated programming) and Cable Television. In most cases, the companies that produce the programs supply BMI with a "cue sheet" - a list of the music each show contains. BMI then credits the appropriate writer and publisher each time the film or program is aired.

Because it would be enormously expensive, if not impossible, to determine exactly what songs are played in every business or organization across America, BMI uses these same radio, and TV performance logs, coupled with commercial music service lists, to determine approximately how frequently our affiliates' music is played for the general public by businesses.

By this extensive national and local sampling, BMI is then able to calculate and project the approximate number of total public performances for all BMI writers and publishers.

Through our sampling process, BMI is also able to track the works of lesser-known songwriters and composers and compensates them for their local public performances.

Given the fact that the average songwriter earns less than $5,000 a year from performance royalties, BMI feels tracking and compensating these songwriters and composers is an important aspect of our business. This is what has helped make us the largest performing rights organization in America.

We believe that having a BMI Music Performance Agreement to use any and all of the musical works in our catalog as often as you like will serve almost all of your music needs.

There are two other performing rights organizations in the U.S. If you play the music from either of these organizations, then you must have separate licenses with one of both of them; or, you need to get the permission of the individual copyright owners whose works they represent.

The BMI repertoire contains the most performed music on American radio today, and is surely one of the top performed catalogs in the world. Chances are, if you are playing music, you are playing BMI music. You may search for specific song titles on this web site with the BMI.com Repertoire Search.

Online access has been available since July 1, 1995 through the BMI Internet repertoire database. Access is bmi.com on the Internet and features a list of all BMI licensed song titles (in alphabetical order), its respective writers and song numbers. To search BMI's song catalog on this web site, click here.

A printed catalogue - 17 volume set (500 pages per volume) is available at an estimated cost of $1,200.00 plus tax and will be updated once a year.

The new BMI repertoire information hotline number is available to obtain song title and writer information. The number is 1-800-800-9313, and you can request information to as many as 3 titles per call.

If you do not charge admission and have a coin-operated jukebox, then you can call the Jukebox License Office (JLO) to get a license for your performances. BMI encourages jukebox operators/owners to obtain a Jukebox License Agreement from the JLO if a jukebox is the only medium by which you play music. You must ensure that a (JLO) registration certificate is displayed in the title strip holder of each jukebox that you operate.

As a jukebox music user, you will need a BMI Music Performance Agreement:

• if you charge admission;
• if your jukebox is activated in any way other than through coin operation;
• if music is played through any medium other than jukebox (e.g., tape, CD, record player or live performances).

If you would like more information, you may call the JLO at 800-955-5853 with any questions you may have. Or call BMI at 1-877-264-2139.