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Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) is a performance rights organisation. It collects license fees on behalf of its songwriters, composers, and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed. BMI Logo

BMI was founded by radio executives in 1939 to provide competition in the field of performing rights, to assure royalty payments to writers and publishers of music not represented by the existing performing right organizations, and to provide an alternative source of licensing for all music users. The company was established as competition for ASCAP, which had dominated the music-licensing industries for decades.

A nonprofit entity, BMI was the first performing rights organization in the United States to represent songwriters of blues, country, jazz, rhythm & blues, gospel, folk, Latin and, ultimately, rock & roll. During the 1940s and 1950s, BMI was the primary licensing organiation for Country artists and R&B artists, while ASCAP centered on more established Pop artists. ASCAP slowly embraced more genres of music, to the point where ASCAP and BMI's are considered to be roughly equal today.

BMI issues licenses to users of music, including:

• television and radio stations and networks;
• new media, including the Internet and mobile technologies such as ringtones and ringbacks;
• satellite audio services like XM and Sirius;
• nightclubs, discos, hotels, bars, and restaurants;
• digital jukeboxes;
• live concerts.

It tracks public performances of members’ music, and collects and distributes licensing revenues for those performances as royalties to over 300,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers it represents, and thousands of creators around the world who have chosen BMI for representation in the U.S.

BMI annually gives awards to songwriters in a number of categories.