Music rights licensing organizations BMI and ASCAP have teamed up to try and provide one-stop rights checking for the music under their respective auspices.
The Songview platform provides each organization's percentage of rights to over 20 million songs so cable, broadcast, online program producers and others know among whom the rights fee pie must be divvied up correctly for songs they want to use in their productions.
The Songview system ingests data and shows the rights apportionment among BMI, ASCAP, and an "other" category, if any, based on rules agreed on by both parties, then supplies the reconciled data back to both, where it is displayed in searchable databases.
The databases also include, where applicable, alternate titles, songwriters and their affiliations, publishers, publisher contact info, performers, and more.
Because it allows song users to know who owns what, the data platform could come in handy if the Justice Department phases out the blanket license consent decrees, as both BMI and ASCAP support.
Justice in June 2019 launched its latest review of the decrees.
“When two companies that are fierce competitors come together on a project this ambitious to address a need identified by the marketplace, it says a lot about how important greater data transparency is to both of our organizations," said BMI president Mike O'Neill.
“This project is all about providing greater transparency for everyone who relies on this copyright data to guide important business decisions," said ASCAP president Elizabeth Matthews. "When you see the SONGVIEW checkmark, you know that the data is consistent in both ASCAP and BMI’s copyright systems."
