Overview[]
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) was established by broadcasters in 1940 to increase the bargaining power of the broadcast industry with ASCAP. BMI represents more than 200,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers, licensing its catalog of more than 3,000,000 musical works.
Although BMI does not extend a radio station’s existing license for over-the-air broadcasts to transmissions over the Internet, BMI does offer a discount to a station if the radio station’s website merely transmits (simultaneously) all or a portion of its over-the-air broadcast signal. If a station wishes to utilize other transmissions over the Internet, particularly transmissions that add musical content beyond that in the over-the-air signal, a different license (and corresponding fee) is issued.