March 2009
Dear Songwriter, Composer and Publisher:
As the worldwide economic crisis continues to take its toll on global financial markets and virtually all sectors of business, I wanted to assure you that the foundation of BMI’s business remains solid and that we are confident in our ability to meet the challenges of the volatile economic landscape. While many industries have found that they must revise or re-invent their basic business models in order to remain viable, we take pride in the fact that, while we are constantly exploring new sources of licensing revenue, our core business continues to provide a steady stream of royalties to compensate you for your creative efforts.
Rest assured, despite the severe economic downturn we are all experiencing, as your trusted broker, BMI will continue to protect your interests vigorously. The turmoil in the global financial markets presents new challenges, as no entity is exempt from the ripple effect of business failings, bankruptcies, and volatile foreign exchange markets. Our fundamental goal of returning fair and equitable royalties to our songwriters, composers and music publishers remains paramount.
The creative community also faces major challenges on the political front. BMI is dedicated to protecting the value of your copyrights in every form. In this age of digital technology and social change, we may ask you to help us, and yourselves, with calls to action to help ensure that any legislation introduced will protect creators’ livelihoods both now and in the future.
BMI’s priority is to ensure you, our songwriters, composers and music publishers, are properly compensated for your creative efforts, and it is imperative that we maintain a strong and effective presence in Washington D.C. that represents your interests.
To this end, we created the BMI Fund, a federal Political Action Committee (“PAC”). Your participation in this PAC will enhance our ability to help elect officials who understand the critical issues in our industry. Many elected leaders have fought for the rights of songwriters, composers, and publishers in the past, and each year there are candidates seeking office who are also committed to preserving the rights of the creators. We need to support these candidates. We also need your support to effectively compete with PACs of major business organizations whose vast memberships support candidates and members of congress, many of whom support changing laws at both federal and state levels to the detriment of copyright holders. Additional information about current legislation that may affect you is available at the “Legislation” section of our website, bmi.com; a BMI Fund contribution form can be downloaded at https://www.bmi.com/bmifund. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.
I’m pleased to inform you that beginning with this distribution, royalty payments for license fees collected from aircraft licensees or aircraft music services will now appear in a separate category, titled “Aircraft,” on your statement. BMI uses performance information provided by our licensees to create a database of BMI-licensed works that are eligible to receive a royalty payment. Since the number of BMI-licensed works, as well as the amount of the license fees collected by BMI, changes from quarter to quarter, the royalty rate for works performed in-flight likewise varies from quarter to quarter.
Our congratulations go to Alison Krauss, Lil Wayne and all those honored at this year’s Grammy Awards, held last month in Los Angeles. Congratulations also to composer A.R. Rahman, who took home Oscars for his score to Slumdog Millionaire and the song “Jai Ho” from that film.
In closing, I want to assure you that as you and your fellow BMI songwriters and composers continue to create the music that has helped build the world’s most popular repertoire, we will make every effort to ensure that you reap the financial rewards you so richly deserve.
Sincerely,
Del Bryant
President
Chief Executive Officer