Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is one of three United States performing rights organizations, along with ASCAP and SESAC. It collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed. In FY 2015, BMI collected more than $1.013 billion in licensing fees and distributed $877 million in royalties. (More from Wikipedia)
“The Sounds of Silence” began climbing the charts and was the #1 single in the country for the first three weeks of 1966 (sandwiched between a Dave Clark Five song and a Beatles song). Simon and Garfunkel began working together again and went on to have one of the most storied careers in American popular music. In 1999, BMI said that “The Sounds of Silence” was the 18th most performed song of the 20th Century.
(June 2013/2)
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There are probably a lot of people who think of “Yesterday” as being the quintessential Beatles song. It is certainly their most successful – from Wikipedia: “It remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. ‘Yesterday’ was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. In 1997, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone.”
(June 2015)
