Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

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Paulie
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Re: Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

Post by Paulie » Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:57 pm

Patrick wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 4:55 am
Remember the 'Bank error in your favor' card from Monopoly?
LOL! That's exactly what I told her at the end of my phone conversation with her. :)
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Paulie
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Re: Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

Post by Paulie » Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:59 pm

For some context, we are talking a few hundred bucks per quarter. I don't know how far it goes back, I doubt she has the patience to download statements, or even how far back the BMI web site can go. I've only been with them for five years or so.
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Re: Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

Post by RPaul » Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:41 pm

I had a situation like this where ASCAP (actually SOCAN) had made a similar error, so I was suddenly getting multi-hundred dollar payments for uses of a song up in Canada. The title of the song in question was similar, but not identical, to one of my songs, and the songwriter's name was either the same as mine or very close.

When I first got the payments (I think it was like $500 between the publishing and writer shares), attributed to my song, I was suspicious because there would have had to have been a sync license, and I'd never issued any for that song (nor did I have any publishers representing the song), and the only recordings were my own and one live performance version from a singer in Germany. I did some research and found one of the actual episodes of the show online and verified it wasn't my song and what the original song and performer (who was probably also the songwriter) was.

I documented all this to ASCAP support, asking them if I could just write them a check or have them reverse the transaction. They said they couldn't do either, and they basically treated it as an advance against future royalties. At that point, my royalty rate was so slow that I figured it would take many years to recoup, but it didn't actually take anywhere near as long as I had expected (mostly thanks to their Onstage program and payments for my live performances of original songs).

No clue, however, if BMI would do the same thing. From my perspective, though, especially if it is a good amount of money, I'd definitely want to report it so the writer who should actually be getting the money would get what they are due. (In my case, ASCAP could only report it to SOCAN to try to deal with it, and there actually was at least one additional set of incorrect payments later, which again got added to my advance royalties balance until recouped. I have no clue if SOCAN ended up finding the right guy.)

Rick

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Re: Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

Post by jdstamper » Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:42 pm

My reaction was the same as Casey. It doesn't seem right to keep taking the money. Try to find a way to get an answer directly from BMI but 'anonymously'. I wonder if you could even go through 3rd party ... maybe a songwriters organization like NSAI??

I would hope the answer from BMI would be something like ... Thanks for notifying us, we'll make the correction, we'll give back pay to the original co-writer, and will not ask for your friend to repay it since it was our error
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Re: Weird BMI Credit Situation... how to fix?

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:46 pm

Put it on a horse - Free bet

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