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Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) is a collecting society that protects composers' intellectual property in the communications business, especially radio. It was founded by the broadcasters as a rival to ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which was boycotting radio at the time in 1944.Both BMI and ASCAP, as well as other organizations like SESAC monitor performances of the music to which they control the rights, and collect and distribute royalties.
BMI has historically been more open to composers of rock and roll, jazz, folk music, blues, and country music who sing and play their own music, while ASCAP has been more identified with non-performing professional songwriters from Hollywood, Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
The ASCAP recording ban and the establishment of BMI are markers of the beginning of the revolution in music that led to turning out the established respectable music of the 1930s and 1940s and its replacement by the popular forms that began to dominate music in the late 1940s and on into the 1950s and 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around. Broadcasters preferred playing tunes for which they already controlled the performing rights and thus paying themselves and not ASCAP.
Quotation
- "I'm a lover not a fighter, I'm a BMI songwriter" -- Ray StevensRay Stevens (born January 24, 1939) is a comedy singer. Discography 1950s The NRC Years 1958-1960 1960s 1837 Seconds of Humor 1962 This is Ray Stevens 1963 Ray 'Ahab The Arab' Stevens And Hal Winters 1965 The Best of Ray Stevens 1967 Even Setevens 1968 Gi, "PFC Rhythm and Blues Jones"
Music industry associations
