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Switch from local P.R.O (BUMA) to BMI

SanderB

New Member
Hi All,

I'd like to switch from my local P.R.O (BUMA in the Netherlands) to BMI. Most of my publishers is in the US so I think it makes sense to join BMI directly. Is there anyone who has experience switching P.R.O's? Currently I have work registered at BMI on my BUMA IPI, but BMI is a little vague about what is going to happen with those registrations. Do I keep my IPI, will they collect royalties from these registrations. Also they are not responsive to my mails/ calls.

Many of my publishers has sub-publishers all over the world, so I am very doubtful now whether I should join BMI or just stay with BUMA.

Also, I heard I can exclude the US from my BUMA account and let BMI only collect US royalties. Is there anyone who has experience with that?

Thanks!

best,

Sander
 
Hello!
Not sure if you’ve had any progress with this, but since no one else has replied I’ll give my experience on this.

I switched from SOCAN (Canada’s PRO) to SESAC (USA PRO) many years ago. My process was, I talked to SOCAN and had to close my account, they sent me my song registrations on file and I sent those to SESAC to register I believe.

You would not get to keep your IPI as it is company specific, and your songs would have to be registered again. There can be some overlap in time with who is collecting your royalties as well, old PRO vs new PRO.

I did this about 10 years ago I think, so some of this is hard to remember.

The only benefit I could see from switching to BMI would be some royalties would come in faster. Anything you collect from the USA should be collected faster as it does not need to be passed onto sub publisher etc.

Regarding letting your current PRO exclude USA, That used to be possible many years ago (nearly a decade) but now it is not recommended because of how interconnected PROs are with the internet etc.The only way that could work is for publishing only, not your writers share.

I hope this helped a little, I know it can be a big decision to switch PROs and it’s quite a headache. Good Luck!
 
Thanks for the reply!

I decided to stay with my local PRO. BMI isn’t responsive at all and what will happen to my catalog nobody knows. A lot of work is also registered at other PRO’s by sub-publishers.

Benefit is indeed royalties come in faster, but with all the sub-publishers nowadays it’s hard to say if most of my work will be in the US anyway.

So it isn’t worth the headache I think.

best,

Sander
 
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