What do ASCAP, BMI and SESAC do?
These PROs represent music composers and publishers by licensing and collecting royalties from businesses that publicly perform, i.e., broadcast or play, the composers’ and publishers’ music. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect information about what music is being performed so they can pay composers and publishers some of the money that was paid to them by the businesses that performed their music. A composer can only be a member of one PRO at a time, but music publishers can have affiliates of two or all three PROs. In short, the relationship is like this: PRO licenses a business the business plays music and the business pays PRO PRO pays the composer/publisher for the music that was played by the business. 8. Why do I need to have licenses with the PROs? Television stations play, i.e., broadcast, music throughout their broadcast day and the composers and publishers of that music are entitled to a payment for the music in those programs. Playing music over the air without the music copyrigh
