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Royalties

ASCAP or BMI — Which PRO Should a Beginner Join?

By Boboy Watson·Last verified August 31, 2026·1,904 words·Royalties

This is usually the first real decision an independent artist has to make about the business side, and it gets overcomplicated online by people comparing royalty distribution formulas you cannot verify and will not notice at your volume.

Most of the numbers circulating for this question are wrong or out of date, including some I repeated for years. So here are the current ones, taken from ASCAP's and BMI's own pages in August 2026, and then the decision they actually point to.

How much does ASCAP cost and how much does BMI cost?

Those figures are as of August 2026, taken from ASCAP's and BMI's own join and FAQ pages. BMI's exact wording is worth having: there is a one-time fee of $175 to affiliate an individual publisher, $250 as publishing company that is a corporation (including sole stockholder corporations) or LLC and $500 for a partnership. BMI states those fees are non-refundable and not deductible from future earnings.

On the writer side, BMI is explicit: although some performing rights organizations collect annual dues, BMI does not. Neither ASCAP nor BMI charges recurring membership fees. Every number in that table is one-time.

Is BMI actually free?

Yes, for the songwriter and composer affiliation. There is no application fee and no annual dues. That is the correct, verifiable answer, and it is why BMI is the cheapest door into performance royalty collection in the United States.

The nuance people add — that BMI is only "free" until you need the publisher side — is worth stating carefully rather than repeating as a gotcha, because BMI's own position on it is clear and it works in a beginner's favour.

Do I need a publishing company to collect the publisher share?

Not when you are starting. BMI's own FAQ says a new songwriter "will not need to set up a publishing company", and that "creating a publishing company will not mean that you receive more royalties."

That is a directly citable myth-buster, and it cuts against a lot of advice circulating in independent music forums. The version of this page you may have read elsewhere — including an earlier version of this one — treats a publisher entity as urgent and mandatory on day one. BMI says otherwise, and BMI is the organization writing the cheques.

The honest framing for a self-releasing artist in the United States is this. If you want both halves of your performance royalties formally registered under your own entities right now, ASCAP costs $50 plus $50 — $100 total, once. If you would rather not pay anything to start, join BMI free as a songwriter and pay the $175 individual publisher fee later, if and when a publisher entity is actually warranted — when you are administering other writers' songs, entering a co-publishing arrangement, running a label, or dealing with a foreign sub-publisher who needs a publisher entity to point at.

What you should not do is skip a performing rights organization altogether while you decide. The writer affiliation is the thing that connects you to the money, and at BMI it costs nothing.

What is the difference between the songwriter share and the publisher share?

Every performing rights organization divides performance royalties on a composition into two shares:

• The songwriter share — roughly 50%, paid to whoever wrote the composition
• The publisher share — roughly 50%, paid to whoever publishes the composition

They are not two descriptions of one payment. They are two separate claims on two halves of the same pot, and ASCAP and BMI pay each half to whoever is registered for it.

In a traditional deal, a publishing company signs the writer and claims the publisher share in exchange for administering the catalogue. When you self-release, there is no such company, which is where the confusion starts — and where BMI's line about not needing a publishing company becomes important context rather than a loophole.

Which performing rights organization should a beginner actually pick?

The five-year picture is where the ASCAP and BMI paths converge. Neither charges annual dues, so a BMI writer who eventually pays $175 for an individual publisher affiliation has spent $175 across five years; an ASCAP member who paid both fees at the start has spent $100. If the publisher entity turns out to be an LLC, BMI is $250 against ASCAP's $50. If you never need the publisher entity, BMI cost you nothing and ASCAP cost you $100.

That spread — zero to $250 — is the entire financial stake in this decision. It is smaller than one year of a Splice Creator subscription.

What does a PRO collect that DistroKid and The MLC do not?

ASCAP and BMI collect the public performance royalty on the composition. That is generated when your song is streamed on Spotify or Apple Music, played on terrestrial or satellite radio, performed live in a licensed venue, played as background music in a business, or used on television.

DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby collect the sound recording royalty and nothing else through basic distribution. The MLC collects US mechanical royalties on the composition and nothing else. SoundExchange collects the digital performance royalty on the sound recording from non-interactive services like Pandora radio and SiriusXM.

Four collectors, four different jobs. If you never affiliate with ASCAP or BMI, no other organization in that list picks up the performance royalty on your behalf. Even DistroKid Publishing, which does collect some composition income, states that it collects both the publisher and songwriter shares only if you are PRO-affiliated — and the publisher share alone if you are not.

Which PRO pays more, ASCAP or BMI?

Nobody outside those organizations can answer this honestly, and anyone who tells you they can is selling something.

ASCAP and BMI both use a mix of census data for large digital services and statistical survey sampling for smaller venues and stations, with weighting formulas that are partially published, partially not, and periodically revised. Two writers with different catalogues, different territories and different play patterns can have opposite experiences at the same organization.

At beginner volume, the variance between ASCAP and BMI is dwarfed by three things you control completely:

1. Whether you registered at all.
2. Whether your works are registered, not just your account.
3. Whether the splits on those works are correct and match what your co-writers registered.

Pick one this week. The choice between them matters far less than making it at all.

Can I switch from ASCAP to BMI later?

Yes, but not casually and not instantly. Both ASCAP and BMI affiliate you for a defined term with a resignation window, and you generally cannot resign mid-term or move works that are already registered and earning until the term ends and the works are properly re-registered at the new organization.

The practical consequence is that switching is a project, not a click. You give notice inside the window, wait out the term, re-register your entire catalogue at the new organization, and accept some administrative drag on payments during the crossover. Co-writers stay where they are; a song with an ASCAP writer and a BMI writer is completely normal and both halves get paid.

None of that should make you agonise over the initial choice. It should just stop you from picking one with a plan to flip in six months. If your catalogue is small and you have a genuine reason to move — a publishing deal that requires it, or a persistently unresolved reporting problem — switching early is much easier than switching with two hundred registered works.

Do I need a PRO outside the United States?

ASCAP and BMI are United States organizations, and everything on this page describes the US system. They do collect foreign performance income for you, but indirectly: both have reciprocal agreements with foreign societies such as PRS for Music in the UK, SOCAN in Canada, GEMA in Germany, SACEM in France and APRA AMCOS in Australia. Those societies collect in their territories and remit to your US organization, which pays you.

You affiliate with one performing rights organization worldwide for your writer share, not one per country. If you live outside the United States, you normally join your home society rather than ASCAP or BMI, and the reciprocal network works in the other direction.

The gap in that network is mechanicals. Reciprocal performance agreements do not collect foreign mechanical royalties, and The MLC covers US usage only. That is the specific hole a publishing administrator such as Songtrust, DistroKid Publishing or CD Baby's publishing product is built to fill, and it is the honest argument for paying one a commission.

What actually costs you money, versus what does not

Things that genuinely cost you money:

• Never affiliating with ASCAP or BMI — the performance pot has no fallback collector
• Having an affiliation but never registering your works against it
• Registering works after release instead of before
• Mismatched splits between co-writers, which freeze payment on the disputed share
• Paying $250 or $500 for a BMI corporate or partnership publisher entity you did not need

Things that will not meaningfully change your income at this stage:

• Which of the two performing rights organizations you pick
• Distribution formula differences you cannot audit
• Whether your publisher entity has a clever name
• Anything anyone argues about in a forum thread

What to do after you join

Joining ASCAP or BMI is not the same as registering your songs. These are two separate actions, and the second one is where beginners stall.

1. Affiliate as a writer — $50 at ASCAP, free at BMI.
2. Decide on the publisher entity deliberately. Register it now at ASCAP for $50, or defer it at BMI until you have a reason and the $175 is warranted.
3. Register each work, listing yourself as writer, your publisher entity if you have one, and the exact splits agreed with any co-writers.
4. Do that for every song you have already released, then for each new one before release.
5. Register the same works with The MLC — free — and with SoundExchange — free — so the other pots are connected too.

Step 3 is the one people skip. An active ASCAP or BMI account with no works registered against it collects nothing, forever, no matter how many streams the songs get.

I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer or an accountant. Fees change — check the current numbers on ASCAP's and BMI's own pages before you register.