Arrangements are not eligible for the live classical distribution at BMI. Please register all arrangements as non-classical by selecting “all other genres” at the beginning of the registration process.
Works that are going straight to recorded release without live concert premieres are not registered as classical. Please register instrumental CD tracks as non-classical by selecting “all other genres” at the beginning of the registration process.
When the new instrumentation of an existing work has the same title and duration, please do not re-register it, but send an email with the details to classical@bmi.com.
At BMI, you need not affiliate a publishing entity in order to receive publishing shares, as we pay all royalties (writer and publisher) to the composer on any self-published works. If you prefer to receive your composer and publisher royalty streams separately, you may affiliate your publishing company by completing the BMI Publisher Application Form. Please note that while composer affiliation is free, there is a one-time fee of $175 to affiliate an individual publisher, $250 as publishing company that is a corporation (including sole stockholder corporations) or LLC and $500 for a partnership.
Music written in service to a film or television show is not registered as classical at BMI, regardless of instrumentation or how the music sounds. BMI will pay the cues based on the cue sheet we receive from the production company. Please don’t register film or TV cues to your catalog.
Yes. Although BMI doesn’t license theatrical or dramatic musical presentations, we do pay for radio broadcast of operas, operettas and musicals, as well as excerpts from dramatic works, and those presentations that are unstaged concert versions.
Text found on the internet without attribution to the author or a publication date is not necessarily in the public domain. Before you can register this work with BMI, you should contact the website’s administrator to determine the copyright holder. Written permission to use any copyrighted text is required before you can register the work with BMI.
To add a movement to a work that already appears in your BMI catalog, please send an email to classical@bmi.com with the updated duration of the full work. Please do not register the new movement separately.
If your work is performed as a transcription for another instrument, then you’d still be credited with the performance of the original version of the work. There is no need to update the registration unless you’ve created an official alternate instrumentation for one of the works that already appears in your catalog. In the latter case, email classical@bmi.com to add the new instrumentation to the existing title.
Generally, individual movements should not be registered as separate works; BMI has a system of in-house registrations to accommodate occasional performances of excerpts or movements from larger works. However, if a movement is being performed frequently and exists as an independent work, the classical department will request a registration from you.
The classical department adds your last name to the beginning of classical works so that they are more easily searchable in our database. Your works also appear without your last name to ensure that they are easily matched to performances from other non-classical sources.
Yes, we still accept both the PDF and paper classical work registration forms. They should be sent to us either via email to classicalworkregistrations@bmi.com or by regular mail to the NY Classical office.
All work titles appear in your catalog without punctuation for the purpose of standardizing titles. This is done automatically during the registration process.
Send us a copy of the concert program (or other acceptable documentation) via email to
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or via regular mail to:
BMI Classical
7 World Trade Center
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007-0030
No. Royalties from radio play are based on a statistical sample. BMI uses performance monitoring data, continuously collected on a large percentage of all licensed commercial radio stations, to determine payable performances. We cannot accept performance reports from our writers or publishers for radio broadcasts.
Some international societies in Europe and Asia have shortened their reporting deadlines significantly. As a result, it is now imperative to report all international live classical concerts within six months of the performance date. Send us a copy of the concert program (or other acceptable documentation) along with a completed International Report Form via email to
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or via regular mail to:
BMI Classical
7 World Trade Center
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007-0030
No. BMI Live is intended for non-classical performances. Quarterly royalty payments from BMI Live are completely separate from the annual Live Classical royalty distribution, For more information, please review our guidelines for reporting classical performances.
Please send a completed Premiere Report Form, along with a copy of the concert program, to BMI. BMI is able to license the first performance of a work in the United States (U.S. premiere) only if we receive written authorization from you or your publisher. This serves to protect your right to control the circumstances of first performance. For more information, please review our guidelines for reporting classical performances.
Arrangements are not eligible for the Live Classical distribution at BMI because they are not original works. Arrangements are, however, eligible for royalties from all other sources. Therefore, please register arrangements by selecting “all other genres” at the beginning of the work registration process.
At BMI we register as classical those works that generally conform to traditional classical practice in their creation and performance, such as:
An original composition created for a live classical concert
A fully notated, through-composed score that is the primary documentation of the work
Composed by one person; performed by others
Scored primarily for acoustic instruments with a minimum of processing or amplification (with the exception of fixed electroacoustic media or live electronics in an otherwise classical setting)
If the work falls outside of classical practice as outlined above, or if it is more closely described by one of the following, we would not register it classical:
Arrangement of a classical work in the public domain
Scores or cues created for film or television
Jazz chart or pop song, or an arrangement thereof
Work that was created for an album, but won’t imminently be performed on a concert
At BMI, we only register as “classical” works that are eligible for the live classical distribution: those that are original (not arrangements), and that are composed for live concert performance by a classical ensemble or under a classical license. If you have never registered a classical work before, please contact the classical department at classical@bmi.com.
