His comment was circulated by the MIC Coalition, whose members include the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Restaurant Association, the Digital Media Association and other organizations whose members are licensed by performing rights organizations to play music publicly. On the other side of the fence is Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who criticized the organizations for not involving Congress and the other, significantly smaller PROs - namely SESAC and Global Music Rights - in the process. I’ve been working to protect the constitutional rights of America’s songwriters for years, and this is a good day for music creators and music lovers.” ASCAP and BMI represent 90% of American songs and have built this database with the potential to include an even broader range of information across the music industry.
ASCAP and BMI are working together to better serve songwriters, publishers, licensees, and the entire music community through a free-market solution that leverages industry expertise and efficiencies. “Today’s announcement from ASCAP and BMI is a substantive step forward in helping modernize the music industry. We’re excited by our momentum and the promise of what this database can become in the future.”Ĭongressman Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a champion of creators’ rights and an original sponsor of the Songwriter Equity Act, issued the following statement in response: While BMI and ASCAP remain fierce competitors in all other regards, we recognize that our combined expertise allows us to create the best solution for our members and the marketplace. We have always advocated for data transparency and supported the need for a user-friendly and comprehensive solution that would benefit music users and music creators alike. With our combined experience, we are best positioned to make faster headway in creating a robust, cost effective market solution to meet the needs of the licensing marketplace.”īMI president/CEO Mike O’Neill, added, “This is an important solution for the marketplace created by the experts who know their data best. Together, ASCAP and BMI have the most expertise in building and managing complex copyright ownership databases.
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We believe in a free market with more industry cooperation and alignment on data issues. Copyright Office was also considered - as they are constantly updating and refining their data for accuracy and have strong market-driven reasons to do so.ĪSCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews said: commented, “ASCAP and BMI are proactively and voluntarily moving the entire industry a step forward to more accurate, reliable and user-friendly data. The two organizations are also the two best entities to host it - the U.S. Thus, this database initiative is unprecedented in its level of scale and cooperation.
While ASCAP and BMI work together frequently on common-interest matters such as the ongoing battle with the Department of Justice over song licensing, the two organizations are traditionally competitors and often-fierce rivals. The move is a welcome one to virtually anyone seeking songwriting and publishing data, which for decades has involved often-laborious digging and combining of information from different sources. The two organizations will continue to maintain their own websites, but users will see the combined database when they search for information on titles. The joint database will serve as a foundation that can evolve to include a broader range of music information across the entire industry. The database, which will be publicly available initially via the two organizations’ searchable repertory databases - ASCAP’s ACE Repertory and BMI’s Repertoire Search - will feature aggregated information from those repertories and will indicate where other performing rights organizations may have an interest in a musical work. UPDATED: In a groundbreaking show of unity, ASCAP and BMI, the nation’s two leading performing rights organizations, announced today that they will create a single, comprehensive database of musical works from their combined repertories that will deliver an authoritative view of ownership shares in the vast majority of music licensed in the United States.Įxpected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2018, the database will feature aggregated song-ownership data from ASCAP and BMI and offer greater transparency to music users and the industry.Īccording to a release, team of copyright, technical and data experts from the two organizations began working on the project over a year ago in anticipation of the demand from licensees and the industry for more clarity around ownership shares.