Answers/Glossary/GMR (Global Music Rights)
Glossary · Royalties
GMR (Global Music Rights)
Global Music Rights is a US performing rights organization founded in 2013 by music executive Irving Azoff. It is invitation-only and represents a deliberately small roster of high-profile songwriters, licensing public performance of their compositions.
Global Music Rights is the newest of the four United States performing rights organizations and by far the smallest by repertory. It was founded in 2013 by Irving Azoff and built around a strategy opposite to ASCAP's and BMI's: rather than licensing millions of works to everyone at scale, GMR represents a small roster of commercially significant songwriters and negotiates directly with broadcasters and digital services.
GMR is invitation-only and does not accept open applications. It does not publish a fee schedule for writers or publishers.
The reason GMR appears in an independent artist's research at all is that comparison articles list four US PROs and rarely explain that two of them are not options. For practical purposes, an independent songwriter chooses between ASCAP and BMI. ASCAP charges a $50 one-time processing fee for a writer account and $50 for a publisher account; BMI songwriter affiliation is free and an individual publisher account is $175, with $250 for a corporation or LLC and $500 for a partnership. Those are the organisations' own published figures, retrieved August 2026.
GMR is worth understanding for one structural reason: its existence is a live demonstration that performance licensing rates are negotiated, not fixed. GMR has been in prolonged legal and commercial disputes with radio broadcasters over what its licence is worth, which is the same question ASCAP and BMI settle under long-standing consent decrees.
The misunderstanding: assuming you can pick GMR "when you get bigger" as a growth step. Affiliation there is not a tier you unlock by hitting a stream count; it is a business relationship GMR initiates.
I am an artist reporting the landscape, not an insider at any of these organisations.
Related terms
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Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.
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