NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — ASCAP and BMI, the two leading performing rights organizations in the U.S. announced that they are partnering to create a single database of musical works from their combined repertories to facilitate identifying the ownership shares of music.
Expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2018, the database will be publicly available initially via ASCAP’s and BMI’s websites. The database will feature aggregated information from BMI’s and ASCAP’s repertories and will indicate where other performing rights organizations may have an interest in a musical work, the two PROs said.
The combined database will also help the two organizations to reconcile their internal databases, with teams from both PROs currently engaged in testing and reconciling the data from each organization, addressing incomplete and/or incorrect registrations, share splits, U.S. representation of international works and complicated ownership disputes, among other things.
The joint database will roll out in phases with phase one expected to launch by the end of 2018, and include the majority of ASCAP and BMI registered songs.
“ASCAP and BMI are proactively and voluntarily moving the entire industry a step forward to more accurate, reliable and user-friendly data. We believe in a free market with more industry cooperation and alignment on data issues. Together, ASCAP and BMI have the most expertise in building and managing complex copyright ownership databases. With our combined experience, we are best positioned to make faster headway in creating a robust, cost effective market solution to meet the needs of the licensing marketplace,” ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews said.
