How To Register Your Music With a PRO
A Performance Rights Organization (PRO) will collect performance royalties on your behalf - but before that happens, you need to register your music. The general process for all PROs will involve you filling in basic details about your track and the owner(s), and this information will be used to collect royalties for you. Two of the most popular PROs in the USA are BMI & ASCAP - so let's go through how to register your music, including inputting both writer and publisher information, and determining their shares within both PROs.
1. Registering your music with BMI
You can register a beat or a full song (instrumental with lyrics) with a PRO. Which type of work you register will determine a few options you choose throughout the registration (e.g. adding artists).
You can register as an individual with no publisher, or with a publishing entity if you have one. As an individual, BMI will pay out both the composer & publisher share of performance royalties to the composer (you) if you don't have a publisher. The royalty share within BMI will equal 200% - 100% for the writer, and 100% publisher.
2. Finding an IPI Number
Although not mandatory, we recommend adding an IPI Number. This can be done within BMI, by searching Songview, selecting how you want to search from the drop-down menu and searching for the corresponding name.
3. Registering your music with ASCAP
The process is very similar for ASCAP, however, with a couple of major differences:
With ASCAP you can only register with a publishing entity - you cannot register your work with ASCAP if you don't have a publisher.
Another major difference is that the royalty share in ASCAP must add up to 100% - 50% for the writer(s), and 50% for the publisher(s). You can't exceed the 50% each/100% total, so for example, if you have two writers, they will get 25% each.
4. Other PROs
ASCAP & BMI aren't the only PROs, they're just the most popular in the USA. Outside of the USA there are others you can use:
UK - Performing Rights Society (PRS) & Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) https://www.prsformusic.com
Germany - GEMA https://www.gema.de
Canada - SOCAN https://www.socan.com
