Answers/Royalties/What ASCAP and BMI Actually Cost to Join (And the One Number Nobody Publishes)

Royalties

What ASCAP and BMI Actually Cost to Join (And the One Number Nobody Publishes)

By Boboy Watson·Last verified September 4, 2026·Royalties

Most pages that answer this question are wrong, and they are wrong in a specific direction: they quote figures that were true a few years ago and have since been withdrawn or waived. I checked both organisations' own pages on 4 September 2026 and this is what they say today, including the one number that is genuinely missing.

Here is the whole answer up front.

What do ASCAP and BMI cost, side by side?

The line that matters most: if you want both halves of your performance royalties registered, ASCAP currently costs nothing and BMI does not. That is a reversal of the advice that circulated for years, and it is the single clearest cost fact in the choice between them today.

How much does it cost to join ASCAP?

Free, in the two cases that cover almost everybody.

ASCAP's application page carries this banner: "Joining ASCAP is free for writers, or if you join as a writer and publisher at the same time." The application then presents exactly three options, priced on the cards themselves:

• Writer & Publisher — Free. ASCAP's own note on this card: "ASCAP royalties are split 50/50 between writers and publishers. Joining as both ensures that you can collect all the royalties coming your way."
• Writer — Free.
• Publisher — $50, non-refundable.

The help centre agrees, and states the condition explicitly:

"Joining ASCAP is free for all new ASCAP writer members. If you join as both a writer and a publisher at the same time, we'll waive both application fees. If you are only joining as a publisher, there is a one-time, non-refundable $50 application processing fee."

So the $50 is real, but it is narrow. It applies when you take a publisher account on its own — either because you are already an ASCAP writer and are adding the publisher side later, or because you publish other people's music and do not write. ASCAP's own description of the publisher card puts it as: "1) you are already an ASCAP Writer, and want to also collect your publisher share of the royalties 2) You do not write music, but plan to publish the music of others."

The practical instruction that falls out of this is one sentence long: apply for writer and publisher at the same time, in the same application, and you will never encounter the $50 at all. Doing it in two visits costs $50 more than doing it in one.

There are no annual dues on either side. The only other membership charge I found anywhere in ASCAP's help centre is a $250 processing fee to update ASCAP's records following a marital dissolution, which is not a thing most people are searching for but is worth knowing exists.

Why do so many pages still say ASCAP charges writers $50?

Because ASCAP used to say it, in wording that did not distinguish writers from publishers.

The help-centre answer at ascap.com/help/my-ascap-membership previously read that there was a one-time $50 fee for each application submission, alongside the correct statement that ASCAP charges no annual dues. Read literally, that sentence charged writers $50, and for a long time it did. I paid it myself: a $50 ASCAP application fee on 12 November 2016. My receipt is real and the fee was real. It is history, not current pricing.

That sentence was copied into hundreds of blog posts, YouTube descriptions, course PDFs and forum answers, where it now outlives its source. When I re-checked the same help-centre URL on 4 September 2026, ASCAP had corrected it to the wording quoted above — free for writers, both fees waived when you apply for both together, $50 only for publisher-only. The stale $50-for-writers claim is no longer on ASCAP's site, and it is wrong wherever you still find it.

I am flagging this explicitly rather than just asserting "ASCAP is free", because if you have read three other pages before this one, you have probably read the $50 figure, and a flat contradiction with no explanation is not a useful answer. The correct summary is: the writer fee was real, it is not charged to new writer members, and ASCAP describes the waiver as its current policy rather than a promotion with a date on it. I do not know the date ASCAP stopped charging it, and I am not going to guess one.

How much does it cost to join BMI?

Free as a songwriter or composer. BMI's join page lists the application requirements for a creator as a valid email address, plus — for applicants under 18 — a custodial trust bank account established at a US bank. No fee appears in those requirements and none is charged. Over 1.5 million songwriters, composers and publishers are affiliated on those terms.

Publisher affiliation costs money, and BMI does not say how much.

Here is BMI's complete published statement of what a US publisher applicant needs:

- Proposed names for your company - Credit card issued by a U.S. bank for payment of a one-time processing fee - Valid email address to receive and electronically sign the affiliation agreement and tax form

That is the whole thing. A fee exists — BMI names it, and requires a specific payment instrument for it — and the amount is not there. The international publisher route says the same thing in a different form: mail the application with "payment by check payable to BMI," again with no amount.

Why can't you just tell me BMI's publisher fee?

Because I could not verify it from BMI, and I will not print a number I cannot stand behind.

What I checked, on 4 September 2026:

• bmi.com/join — states the fee exists, gives no amount.
• bmi.com/faq/category/joining — the FAQ category that used to carry the figure. Returns 404.
• bmi.com/faq — redirects to a Creators FAQ index which is paginated and filtered client-side. It has "Joining BMI" and "Publishing" categories, but I could not reach a fee answer at a stable, citable URL.
• BMI's standard publisher agreement PDF — checked 1 September 2026, contains no dollar figure anywhere in the document.

As dated history only: BMI published a publisher affiliation fee of $175 for an individual, $250 for a corporation or LLC, and $500 for a partnership. Those figures were live on BMI's site until August 2026 and were retrieved then. They cannot be re-verified today and should not be treated as current. I am including them because if you are budgeting, knowing the order of magnitude of what BMI charged eleven weeks ago is more useful than nothing — and because if the page you are on right now quotes them as current, you should distrust that page.

I also checked the two most widely cited third-party sources for this figure. They contradict each other, and neither cites BMI. That is exactly the situation in which repeating a number does real damage: a wrong figure in a budget is worse than a blank line, because a blank line makes you go look.

Nobody else is going to tell you this number is missing. Every guide that answers "how much is BMI publisher affiliation" with a confident figure today is either quoting the withdrawn page without saying so, or quoting another guide that did.

How do I see BMI's current publisher fee myself?

Two minutes, no commitment:

1. Go to join.bmi.com and start the publisher application.
2. Have your proposed company names ready — BMI asks for these early, because it clears the name against existing affiliates.
3. Proceed to the payment step. The amount is displayed before you are charged. You need a US-issued credit card at that point, but you do not have to submit.
4. Note the figure and the date you saw it. That is now a better source than anything published about it, including this page.

If you would rather ask a person, BMI's creative department is reachable at (844) BMI-4255.

Is "ASCAP license fee" the same thing as membership?

No, and this is where a lot of searches go sideways. The phrase means two unrelated things:

• If you write music, there is no licence fee. You are a member. Writer membership is free, there are no dues, and ASCAP pays you.
• If you run a business that plays music — a bar, restaurant, gym, salon, retail store, venue — an ASCAP licence is what lets you publicly perform music that ASCAP represents. It is quoted from your business type, size and how music is used, not listed as a flat price, and you request it from ASCAP's licensing side. BMI runs the equivalent, with licence types listed by business category.

If you got here typing "ascap license fee" and you are a songwriter, the answer to your real question is $0.

What are you actually buying with the publisher fee?

The right to collect the other half of your money.

Every performance royalty a US PRO distributes is split into a writer share and a publisher share. ASCAP states this on the application itself: "ASCAP royalties are split 50/50 between writers and publishers." A writer with no publisher entity registered collects the writer half, and the publisher half goes unpaid to them. That is the entire economic content of the fee — it is not a service, a promotion or a membership perk. I have written that mechanism up in full in writer share vs publisher share and why am I only getting half my performance royalties.

Which is why the cost difference matters so much more than it used to. At ASCAP, claiming both halves is free if you do it in one application, so there is no scenario in which a writer should skip it. At BMI, claiming both halves has a price, and BMI does not tell new songwriters they need a publishing company. If you affiliate with BMI as a writer and defer the publisher side, you should do it knowingly, and you should know that the deferred half is genuinely being left behind — with one caveat I have not been able to close out, which I describe in the writer-share page.

What neither fee buys you

Neither ASCAP nor BMI collects your mechanical royalties in the US — that is The MLC, which is free to join. Neither collects your recording royalties — that is your distributor, and SoundExchange for non-interactive radio. Neither promotes you, gets you a deal, or places your music; BMI says so directly in its own FAQ.

And no fee at either organisation registers your songs for you. Affiliation gets you an account. Money moves when works are registered, one by one, with correct splits — which is the free part everybody skips. The order of operations is in how to register with ASCAP or BMI, and the wider comparison of who can even accept you is in ASCAP vs BMI vs SESAC vs GMR.

What I would do today

Affiliate as a writer with either one — both are free, and on cost alone there is nothing to choose between them. Then register the publisher side, and register it at the same time as the writer application if you are going to ASCAP, because that is the only moment it is free.

If you are going to BMI, treat the publisher fee as a real, unquoted expense. Go look at the number yourself before you plan around it, and do not let anyone — including me — tell you what it is.

I am an artist reporting what ASCAP and BMI publish about their own fees, not a lawyer or an accountant. Both organisations change their pricing and their pages; every figure here was read from ascap.com and bmi.com on the retrieval dates listed in the sources above, and the BMI publisher fee is specifically an amount I could not verify. US scope throughout.