PRO publisher account?

[Russell Landwehr]

I just found this on a BMI faq page:

"If you do not have a publisher, you will also receive the publisher’s share as a writer."

[Russell Landwehr]

When you register a work at BMI, if you do not have a publisher, you can register the work as 200% royalties to you. You don't have to fill out publisher info if there is no publisher, and you put your writer's share in as 200%. This negates the need to "be" a publisher when registering your own self-published works. Publishing is also re-assignable.

Here is some info from BMI's "basic" royalties info page: http://www.bmi.com/creators/royalty/gen ... formation/

How Royalties Are Divided
Every work registered with us has a writer’s share and a publisher’s share. All of the writers’ shares must add up to 100% and all the publishers’ shares also have to add up to 100%. Yes, that’s right: the shares in every BMI work add up to 200%!

So here are the rules for dividing up the 200% royalty:

The publishers’ shares can’t be more than 100%.
If there’s an agreement between the writers and publishers where the writers also get a piece of the publisher’s share, the total shares for the work still can’t be more than 200%

Where some or all of the publishers’ share hasn’t been assigned, the writers without publishers will also receive the corresponding portion of the publisher’s share.

If any shares change after the initial registration (like a new publisher gets involved), BMI will credit the new publisher with its share only for performances that happen after we’re told to make the change.

HTH
Russell