ASCAP & BMI Announce Creation of a New Comprehensive Musical Works Database

From Variety:

In a groundbreaking show of unity, ASCAP and BMI, the nation’s two leading performing rights organizations, announced today that they will create a single, comprehensive database of musical works from their combined repertories that will deliver an authoritative view of ownership shares in the vast majority of music licensed in the United States.

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More Details From the Joint News Release:

The joint database will roll out in phases with Phase One expected to launch by the end of 2018, and include the majority of ASCAP and BMI registered songs. It will be secure, user-friendly and searchable and will be updated as new information becomes available. Future phases will explore customizable, interactive API solutions and the potential inclusion of other databases.
ASCAP and BMI have proven their commitment to industry-wide data transparency by making public aggregated song share ownership through their respective online, searchable repertory databases – ASCAP’s ACE Repertory and BMI’s Repertoire Search. Both PRO public databases already include the following information, which will be combined in the joint database:
Song and composition titles
Performing artist information
Aggregated shares by society for ASCAP & BMI
International Standard Work Codes (ISWC) and other unique identifiers
IP names and numbers.

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