Thursday, March 22, 2012

(409) BMI TYPE DATABASES CAN BE WRONG

The ASCAP and BMI type songwriter databases, which help you find out who owns the intellectual properties to a song, can be wrong.

The reasons why are easy to explain.

When a songwriter sells his or her portion of the earnings on a song or leaves their portion in an inheritance to another person, someone who never wrote a song in their life can appear on the songwriter portion. A original partnership of two can appear to be a team of twelve. IT'S NOT REALLY A SONGWRITER'S DATABASE. It's a song OWNERSHIP database, about accounting.

Sometimes publishers sell part of their rights to a song to another publisher so more than one publisher may be involved.

A songwriter, artist, or publisher, who is registered with ASCAP or BMI is always locatable, should you want to use their song and pay them what you owe.


You simply contact the organization, tell them what song, and they contact the songwriter. Or if the songwriter has sold all their work or moved their work to another database/organization, they may have the address or be willing to forward for you.

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