By Marc Schneider
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Songview, the song data platform first launched in 2020 by ASCAP and BMI, has entered a new era of expansion with SESAC and Global Music Rights (GMR) joining the family as partners. This integration brings together data from all four major U.S. performing rights organizations (PROs), providing a more comprehensive view of U.S. musical works. With the upcoming inclusion of SESAC and GMR’s catalogs, Songview will soon provide access to ownership and administration data for more than 38 million songs.
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The platform was originally designed to address long-standing frustrations around fragmented and opaque copyright data. Pre-Songview, data-seekers could only search works registered with individual PROs, making it difficult to reconcile ownership across organizations. Built by a team of copyright and product experts — the system “took a village to build,” said ASCAP executive Nick Lehman at the time — Songview remedies this by bridging data across the PROs and displaying a green checkmark when all parties agree on the information. Users can access detailed metadata, including songwriter and publisher credits, alternate titles, performer names and industry-standard identifiers like ISWC and IPI.
The service is free and publicly accessible through ASCAP and BMI‘s websites.
With the addition of SESAC and GMR, Songview will now encompass all fully owned works from all four U.S. PROs, with data on jointly owned compositions to be added in the coming months, the organizations said. One of the platform’s most requested features — the display of publisher names for works shared between PROs — is slated for an upcoming update, while ownership percentages are expected in future releases. By consolidating data from the big four U.S. PROs into a single platform, Songview marks a major step forward in copyright transparency, industry collaboration and the modernization of music licensing.
The move has drawn praise from both lawmakers and industry leaders. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin said “music ownership data has for years been fragmented and opaque” and lauded the effort as a “giant step towards transparency” that supports businesses in making informed licensing decisions. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House IP subcommittee, emphasized that transparency in copyright is essential to both creator compensation and the ability of licensees to have the “predictability they need.”
The leaders of all four PROs echoed this sentiment. ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews said the collaboration “provides more transparency to licensees into musical ownership data for the combined repertories of the most performed music in the world.” BMI president and CEO Mike O’Neill highlighted the goal of making Songview the industry’s single most comprehensive copyright database, calling it an example of “how we as an industry can successfully collaborate and deliver solutions that benefit the entire music community.” GMR co-founder and CEO Randy Grimmett called the expansion “a major step in addressing the needs of licensees,” while SESAC chairman and CEO John Josephson underscored that the partnership delivers on requests from both licensees and Congress.
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