February 2023
Dear Songwriter, Composer and Publisher,
I hope 2023 is off to a great start for you. Here at BMI, we’re coming off a year of exciting transformation and are looking forward to all the opportunities ahead to build on our service to you.
In October, I shared the news that BMI was changing its business model, a move designed to best position our company for the future, enable us to reinvest in our business, and ensure we can continue to grow the value of your music for many years to come. This quarter’s royalty distribution is the first under that new business model and I’m thrilled to report that it is the largest in BMI’s history. When we announced our shift to a for-profit model, we said our goal was both to reinvest in BMI and increase our overall distributions at an even greater rate than before. As this quarter demonstrates, we’re well on our way to achieving that.
Since making our announcement, we’ve been exploring a number of promising initiatives and projects to help benefit our creative community. We’ve also been approached by various businesses and services who are interested in working with us, outreach we simply didn’t receive when we operated under the constraints of our old model. As we said we would, we’re carefully evaluating all of these opportunities and there’s a lot of potential ahead. I look forward to sharing more detail with you soon.
In other news, last month we were happy to welcome BMI’s new Vice President, Creative, Film, TV & Visual Media, Tracy McKnight. Tracy has extensive music and film industry experience on both the creative and business sides and is truly passionate about your work. I know she’ll be a terrific champion and advocate for our outstanding composer community.
In addition to your regularly scheduled royalties, this distribution includes the following retro payments for those who are eligible: Amazon Prime Music, Amazon Unlimited Free and Amazon Unlimited, all for 2021, as well as JioSaavn for 2019. We’re also including first time distributions for Twitch for 2021 and Verizon Fios from 2019 through 2021, again for those to whom it applies. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to sign up for direct deposit.
As always, I’d like to congratulate all our affiliates who received impressive industry accolades this quarter: our GRAMMY winners, Latin GRAMMY winners, Academy Award nominees, Premio Lo Nuestro nominees, and those selected for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Last month, we were delighted to support our composers at the Sundance Film Festival, where we hosted our annual roundtable moderated by the renowned Ludwig Göransson. Next up, we’re very excited for all our stages and events at SXSW, as well as BMI’s Latin Awards and Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards in March, plus looking ahead, BMI’s Pop Awards and our Film, TV & Visual Media Awards in May.
I want to thank you for entrusting us with your phenomenal creative work. On behalf of everyone at BMI, it’s our privilege to represent you and we’re ready to make 2023 another terrific year together.
Sincerely,
Mike O'Neill
President and Chief Executive Officer
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