May 2022
Dear Songwriter, Composer and Publisher,
I hope you and your loved ones are doing well and looking forward to the summer. As planned, the BMI team has transitioned back into the office and we’re very excited to be able to open our doors again and see you in person, at our offices, our Award shows and events, as well as at all the great music festivals happening now.
As we continue to serve our creative community, we also want to address the devastating global conflict that is taking place overseas. This quarter, BMI took part in an initiative led by CISAC to help benefit music creators in Ukraine and surrounding areas while also providing humanitarian aid to those who are so desperately in need. Moving forward, BMI will continue to work closely with CISAC and our global society partners to support creators in Ukraine during this extremely challenging time.
We’re pleased to see recovery in the live music space continuing, and to this end, BMI recently encouraged the passage of two important Nashville Metro Council resolutions that aim to preserve, protect, and promote music venues and the music industry in Nashville. One of these resolutions will help ensure that many of the city’s legendary and treasured independent music venues not only recover from the effects of the pandemic, but also secure their future. The other resolution seeks to revitalize the dormant Music City Music Council, which was created several years ago, to support the local creative and business communities that make Nashville a global music center. Both of these resolutions were passed by the Council, and we look forward to seeing their impact on the local music industry.
In addition to your usual royalties, for those eligible this distribution includes Internet Audio retro payments for Echelon Fitness from 2020 through 2021 and Les Mills for 2021, as well as Internet Audiovisual royalties for CW Seed from 2016 through third quarter of 2021. We’re continuing to see growth in evolving categories, such as fitness and gaming, among others, and we’re actively adding new licenses across these markets, all contributing to the strength of our distributions to you.
On another note, in response to the rise of email phishing attempts and scams that we’ve all seen in the news, we want to reassure you that the security of your personal information and data is of the utmost importance to us. Please note that you will never receive an unsolicited email from BMI requesting your personal information, such as account passwords, or asking you to click any links to share confidential data. We’ve put together some helpful tips for you to keep in mind to protect your personal information, which we hope you’ll find useful.
Finally, we have so many affiliates to congratulate this quarter: our BMI Pop Award winners, including BMI Icons Carole Bayer Sager and Mike Stoller; our BMI Film, TV and Visual Media Award honorees, including BMI Icon Brian Tyler and our BMI Impact Award winners, Amy Andersson, Miriam Cutler, Isolde Fair, Penka Kouneva, Starr Parodi, and Lolita Ritmanis; our Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards honorees; our BMI Latin Award winners, including our BMI President’s Award honorees, Wisin & Yandel; and our Student Composer Award recipients. In addition, we were excited to pay tribute to the legendary songwriting duo Gloria and Emilio Estefan at the BMI/NAB Dinner in April. We’re also proud to congratulate our GRAMMY winners, Premio Lo Nuestro winners, SCL winners, Ivor Novello nominees, and our NEA Jazz Masters, all representing our incredibly talented affiliates across genres.
Next up, we’re thrilled to be hosting our BMI Parking Lot Party in Nashville, which will be the largest #1 Party ever, celebrating nine of country star Luke Combs’ hits. Later in June, we’re excited to host BMI’s Christian Awards and are already looking ahead to our fantastic stage at Lollapalooza. It’s going to be a great summer! Enjoy it and be well.
Sincerely,
Mike O'Neill
President and Chief Executive Officer