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Glossary · Royalties

BMI

By Boboy Watson·Last verified September 1, 2026·Also called Broadcast Music Inc, BMI affiliation

BMI is the largest US performing rights organization by affiliate count and, since a 2022 restructuring, operates as a for-profit company. It licenses the public performance of its affiliates' compositions to broadcasters, streaming services, venues and businesses, and distributes performance royalties to songwriters, composers and publishers.

Songwriter and composer affiliation is free. BMI's join page lists the requirements as a valid email address, and nothing else, for anyone over 18.

The publisher side is where this entry has to be unusually careful. BMI charges a publisher affiliation fee — its join page requires "a credit card issued by a U.S. bank for payment of a one-time processing fee" — but BMI no longer publishes the amount anywhere. Checked 1 September 2026: the fee is not on the join page, and neither of BMI's downloadable publisher agreements contains a dollar figure.

Until August 2026 BMI's own FAQ gave the figures as $175 to affiliate an individual publisher, $250 for a corporation or LLC and $500 for a partnership, non-refundable and not deducted from future earnings. Both of the URLs that carried those numbers now return 404. They are recorded here as history and should not be treated as current — the only way to see today's figure is to begin an application at BMI. Any page still quoting $175 as a live, verified number is quoting a page that no longer exists, and any page saying BMI charges songwriters $75 was always wrong.

BMI has also published a useful myth-buster: a new songwriter "will not need to set up a publishing company," and "Creating a publishing company will not mean that you receive more royalties." That wording came from the same FAQ pages BMI has since removed, retrieved August 2026. A publisher account changes who can be paid the publisher share, not how much the song earns.

The misunderstanding: BMI does not collect mechanical royalties, which go to The MLC, and does not collect the digital performance royalty on recordings, which goes to SoundExchange.

I check these fees at bmi.com rather than trusting blogs, and so should you — and as of September 2026 that check is how I learned BMI had stopped publishing one of them.

Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.