Internet and Mobile Services
BMI licenses certain digital music services and is seeking to license many more. In addition, BMI has licenses with most major mobile entertainment providers. As these mediums for licensing and distribution continue to evolve, policies are being established as to how streams are to be tabulated and royalties are to be distributed. To the extent that music usage information has been submitted to us, we will distribute royalties for streams of your music over digital music services licensed by BMI.
Specific to digital music services, works can become eligible for both a CURRENT ACTIVITY PAYMENT as well as a STREAMING HITS BONUS.
The Current Activity Payment
All works in the BMI repertoire that are performed on a digital music service will be eligible for a Current Activity Payment. BMI calculates a unique royalty rate for each work, which is based upon the license fees collected from the service that performed the work in combination with the number of times each work streamed on the service.
The Streaming Hits Bonus
Beginning with the Q1 2015 Performances, BMI has implemented a new value system for the most-streamed works on digital services. For the applicable service BMI will calculate a bonus on a per-stream basis for the most streamed BMI works. Note, the bonus funds comes from a general licensing pool, not directly from digital music service fees, which has been the industry practice since BMI opened its doors. The new value system will begin with royalties distributed in September 2015. Additional services will be added going forward.