Broadcast Music Incorporated

Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) is a collecting society that protects composers' intellectual property in the communications business, especially radio. It was founded by the broadcasters as a rival to ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which was boycotting radio at the time in 1944. Both BMI and ASCAP, as well as other organizations like SESAC monitor performances of the music to which they control the rights, and collect and distribute royalties. BMI has historically been more open to composers of rock and roll, jazz, folk music, blues, and country music who sing and play their own music, while ASCAP has been more identified with non-performing professional songwriters from Hollywood, Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. The ASCAP recording ban and the establishment of BMI are markers of the beginning of the revolution in music that led to turning out the established respectable music of the 1930s and 1940s and its replacement by the popular forms that began to dominate music in the late 1940s and on into the 1950s and 1960s. Broadcasters preferred playing tunes for which they already controlled the performing rights and thus paying themselves and not ASCAP. Quotation
"I'm a lover not a fighter, I'm a BMI songwriter" -- Ray Stevens, "PFC Rhythm and Blues Jones"

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
puppet state
sargon
independent rpg video game
newcomb's paradox
field gun
pascal
life under taliban rule
dear abby
bbc radiophonic workshop
nicholas lyndhurst
breakbeat
intel 8008
communications act of 1934
science fiction sitcom
itt
list of science fiction television programs
comic science fiction
vo nguyen giap
list of norwegian monarchs
harald ii of norway
harald iii of norway
dumont television network
dumont
fm broadcasting in the usa
american society of composers, authors, and publishers
bao dai
harald iv of norway
olav v of norway
harald v of norway
farscape
art gallery
great sandy desert
auction bridge
charles viii
shopping
philippe ptain
dr dos
umberto i of italy
art colony
location
tate gallery
national gallery of scotland
national gallery of victoria
whitney museum of american art