Internet and Mobile Services

BMI licenses certain digital music services and is seeking to license many more. In addition, BMI has licenses with most major mobile entertainment providers. As these mediums for licensing and distribution continue to evolve, policies are being established as to how streams are to be tabulated and royalties are to be distributed. To the extent that music usage information has been submitted to us, we will distribute royalties for streams of your music over digital music services licensed by BMI.

Specific to digital music services, works can become eligible for both a CURRENT ACTIVITY PAYMENT as well as a STREAMING HITS BONUS.

The Current Activity Payment

All works in the BMI repertoire that are performed on a digital music service will be eligible for a Current Activity Payment. BMI calculates a unique royalty rate for each work, which is based upon the license fees collected from the service that performed the work in combination with the number of times each work streamed on the service.

The Streaming Hits Bonus

Beginning with the Q1 2015 Performances, BMI has implemented a new value system for the most-streamed works on digital services. For the applicable service BMI will calculate a bonus on a per-stream basis for the most streamed BMI works. Note, the bonus funds comes from a general licensing pool, not directly from digital music service fees, which has been the industry practice since BMI opened its doors.  The new value system will begin with royalties distributed in September 2015.  Additional services will be added going forward.

The Annual Bonus

The Annual Bonus is comprised of three distinct bonus categories that are calculated through the assessment of a full calendar year of performances, and the associated quarterly earnings that have previously been paid. They include: 1) a digital audiovisual streaming bonus that recognizes the popularity of series and films across the major audio visual streaming services; 2) an audio bonus that recognizes the aggregated yearly impact of top-performing songs on radio and digital services; 3) a catalog bonus for songwriters whose many songs were widely performed across multiple digital streaming services but most, if not all, of the songs did not qualify for quarterly bonuses. The Annual Bonus is planned to be included in our yearly November distribution.