Just got an email from the “Sync My Music” guy.

Excerpt:
“Leading Growth-Oriented Investment Firm to Accelerate BMI’s Growth Plan to Drive Increased Distributions and Enhanced Services for its Affiliates

BMI Affiliates to Receive $100 Million of Sale Proceeds Following Transaction Closing”

New Mountain Capital Announces Majority Growth Investment In BMI

I don’t know if this is good news or bad news for composers. It will be an interesting ride for sure!

I don’t know, either, but hedge funders are buying up everything from single family homes to guitar centers to formula 1 race teams, so why not?

As an ASCAP member, I fear the idea of moving from a composer-publisher owned, non -profit entity to something profit driven - I hope it doesn’t happen in my neighborhood, but it may.

Having detached money from the value of things (which started with dropping the gold standard because you can’t print endless supplies of gold, followed by 20+ years of artificially low interest rates to get everyone out of their depth debt-wise) the super rich have now printed enormous inflationary piles of money for themselves to price ordinary people out of everything so they can then buy it all up for themselves and rent it back to us plebs. Is this a political statement? Not really because it's bigger than that - it affects everything - from the price of vintage microphones and outboard (which have become rich man's assets rather than studio tools) to the distribution of music which is cutting artists and producers ever smaller slices of the action through fraud and deception. How many youngsters own physical music collections these days? They just rent access to play these collections that can be disappeared at the press of a button - out of the control of the end-consumer.

Let's say you love a particular artist's music - but it turns out they are a bit dodgy (or don’t follow the narrative) - hey presto! They can bee cancelled/deleted from the streaming platforms - stuff you paid for “disappeared” down the memory hole. The more the globalist corporate machines get a finger in every pie, the more this future is guaranteed. This is why I still buy CDs (and then rip off-line copies for my media server(s) ) I believe physical sales of actual media are more difficult to bury and therefore artists are more likely to see some income from them. My vinyl and CDs are covered by my house insurance – what happens if you are deprived of your purchased online music collection? Can you even insure a virtual asset? The cost of laziness and convenience is going to be enormous. I own multiple dictionaries roughly 10 years apart going back about a century – dictionaries were pretty stable other than new words until about 20 years ago. I can show my grandchildren what certain words ACTUALLY mean rather than the modern Orwellian online dictionary revisions. The ultimate irony is of course is “1984” is starting to come with trigger warnings. It’ll be for the chop soon. You know the revolution is nearly complete when the book burning begins.

^The post above needs to be moved to The Moan Zone!

@ Scragend you summed up how I feel often about this "you will own nothing" new world order we are in, makes me sad.

At least you're awake - I feel sorry for the people who think this is all tinfoil hat nonsense.

It is.

Anyway, I am curious about how royalties will change for composers and publishers with BMI.

It's completely related to the take over of everything by globalist conglomorates, your desire to cancel any opinion that triggers you is so right-think.

Yes, I cancel nonsense. That makes me right!

what exactly does "globalist" mean

People, politicians, companies marching towards the WEF aims of a nationless, borderless world of rent-everything citizens (slaves) to the unelected tiny super-rich elite. They don't even hide it, read WEF founder Klauss Scwabb's book "The Great Reset" - this is the future they have planned for us - then look around you at what's going on - and despite all this info being in plain sight people still bury their heads and throw conspiracy theorist barbs around.

You’ll be sharing your profits with hedge funders - probably a good time to switch to ASCAP, where the “company” is run by the creators, not the predators.

This will never happen.

youre a ****ing idiot

Ahhhhh... If it were only so easy. For me BMI has easily been the call for decades. In the future? Who knows. But right now, as of last quarter, I'd make less at ASCAP. There is no good choice IMO. And I've considered them all.

PS - as for the BMI decision....I have nothing good to say about it. Reading it I felt like is was listening to a swamp rat politician. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm expecting a huge drop in royalty bottom lines.

If you did decide to switch PROs, is there any foreign PRO that you would be open to? I know that taxes could possibly be a big impact with a foreign PRO, especially one in the E.U.

I would not switch to ASCAP. (even though "owned" by "us" there is internal corruption - big time). SESAC is meh.... At least for what I do. So it's BMI, or some foreign PRO which seems like a huge PITA. I'll just ride it out unless it becomes beyond hopeless.

Really, production music writers, composers, film composers, ad music composers need to form their own PRO. That would double or triple our income. Who wants to get that started?







(not me, I'm too old....).

dweezil zappa has an interesting website called reward music, it's not perfect but I think it's a very good idea in principle.

I've been trying to register with BMI for several months. For some reason my email address is now in their system but I'm not an official member yet. Their computer is great at spitting out "we'll get to you" messages but I'm thoroughly unimpressed by BMI customer service. I have songs to register and BMI doesn't seem to give a ****. If this is the typical BMI service level before they owe me money, I'd hate to see the runaround if my $$$ was also stuck in their system.

Keep trying.

https://violationtracker.goodjobsfir...untain-capital

Violation Tracker Current Parent Company Summary

Current Parent Company Name: New Mountain Capital
Ownership Structure: privately held
Headquartered in: New York
Major Industry: private equity (including portfolio companies)
Specific Industry: private equity (including portfolio companies)
Penalty total since 2000: $12,285,282
Number of records: 63

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/...al-1235804157/

While the move has met with significant concern from the songwriting and publishing communities, the announcement states, “New Mountain’s growth investment in BMI will accelerate the company’s ambitious value creation plan, which has three core tenets:

“1. First, to continue to grow cash distributions for its affiliates.

“2. Second, to invest in next generation technology platforms and new service offerings that will improve royalty collections, enhance BMI’s customer service, and deliver the best possible experience for its affiliates.

“3. Third, to add new revenue streams driven by organic growth investments and M&A opportunities, with an initial focus on improving general licensing royalty collections, international partnerships and new service offerings. New growth investments will create additional opportunities for distribution income for its affiliates. New Mountain’s investment does not change the distribution targets previously communicated, which is the same approach the company followed in calendar year 2023 and which it will follow moving forward.”

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as financial advisor to BMI and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP served as its legal advisor. Moelis & Company served as financial advisor to New Mountain, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP served as its legal advisor. As part of New Mountain’s investment, CapitalG will also invest a passive minority stake in BMI.

The payout from the BMI sale should be going to your bank account tomorrow. Log in to BMI to see how much money you received from the sale.

Link? I heard it was coming 5/17/24 with the 2023 4th quarter payment.

[edit]: Saw it. Underwhelming compared to even a normal payment. Especially if royalties continue to soften.... Time will tell.

Thx for the heads up.

I didn’t expect much honestly. It’s a few extra bucks to play with. I'll probably buy some new sample library, go out to dinner, and get a nice bottle of wine.

It was enough to buy a beater crap vehicle for my son, but I expected more of a team effort out of them. I guess I was just a fool expecting better... It's obvious that we are just the worker bees making honey for the masters.

The lack of transparency, method of calculation payouts (tiers), and overall calculated sales pitch leaves much to be desired AFAIC. The future is.....veiled. From my perspective. Which was pretty much echo'd by other writers that I talked to.

You could pick up a car like this for your son:

BMW 2-Series

https://www.carfax.com/vehicle/WBA1G...?partner=SBC_1

Not with this payout I couldn't...

😞 Geez Louise!

I guess only Alan Ett made any real money from this payout.