How to Switch PROs in 2026 Without Losing Royalties

Last updated: September 2026

Switching performing rights organizations in the U.S. is legal, free, and far more annoying than it should be. To switch from ASCAP to BMI you must resign through ASCAP's Member Access portal during a three-month notification window tied to the quarter you originally joined; the resignation then takes effect on the next quarterly effective date (April 1, July 1, October 1, or January 1). To switch from BMI to ASCAP you must mail a signed termination notice to BMI's Nashville office, postmarked no more than six months and no less than three months before your current two-year term ends. Email doesn't count. Miss either window and you wait until it opens again.

Then the part nobody warns you about: your old PRO keeps paying you for your existing catalog under "licenses in effect," your new PRO has to update the international IPI database before any foreign society will pay you a cent, and if you self-publish you must resign your publisher account too or your songs stay stuck at the old shop. Roughly 80,000 writers joined ASCAP in 2025 alone (ASCAP, February 2026); a meaningful slice of them will eventually want to leave, and most will do it wrong. This guide walks through the whole process, the traps, and the checklist.

Why would a songwriter switch PROs in 2026?

The two most common reasons in 2026 are money and ownership. ASCAP reported record revenue of $1.945 billion for 2025 and $1.759 billion in distributions, with a 10% overhead rate and no outside investors (ASCAP, February 2026). BMI, by contrast, has been majority-owned by private equity firm New Mountain Capital since the deal closed in February 2024, and now operates for profit with a stated goal of distributing about 85% of licensing revenue to affiliates (Music Week, 2023; Royalty Exchange, 2025). BMI also stopped publishing full financials after its fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 (Billboard, February 2026). For some writers that ownership change is a dealbreaker; for others BMI's bonus structure or a co-writer's affiliation matters more.

Other legitimate reasons include: your co-writers or publisher are all at the other PRO and you want to consolidate; you received an invitation from SESAC or GMR (both are invite-only and pay differently); you're moving abroad and want to affiliate directly with a foreign society; or you simply believe your specific catalog (heavy TV cues, heavy radio, heavy live) would score better under the other PRO's distribution formula. None of these are wrong. But "my friend said BMI pays more" is not a reason. The distribution formulas are different enough that the same song can earn more at one PRO in one quarter and less the next.

How do you resign from ASCAP in 2026?

ASCAP resignation happens entirely online, in Member Access under Profile → Membership Status. If you're inside your notification window you'll see a "begin resignation" button; if you don't see it, your window isn't open. The window is annual and based on the quarter you were elected to membership (ASCAP Resignation FAQ, updated with the Compendium effective September 19, 2025):

Two things bite people here. First, a notice of resignation is irrevocable once submitted unless ASCAP agrees in writing to let you undo it (ASCAP Compendium, 2025). Second, when you resign you must choose what happens to your existing catalog: leave it at ASCAP and keep collecting domestic royalties on it forever, or request removal so the works can move to your new PRO. Most resigning members pick option one because it's simpler, but it means you'll be a two-PRO writer for the rest of your career: old songs at ASCAP, new songs at BMI.

How do you terminate a BMI affiliation agreement?

BMI's process is paper-based and stricter. Your standard writer agreement runs an initial two years and auto-renews for two-year terms; the publisher agreement runs five years and also auto-renews (BMI Affiliation Agreement Info, updated August 2026). To terminate, you mail a signed notice (BMI publishes a printable form) to BMI, Attn: Writer Administration, 10 Music Square East, Nashville, TN 37203-4399, and it must be postmarked no more than six months and no less than three months before the end of your current term. It must go by registered, certified, Express, or another courier method that records the send date. BMI states plainly that "notice by email is not acceptable and will not be processed."

The practical consequence: if your BMI term ends December 31, 2026, your mailing window is roughly July 1 through September 30, 2026. Ship it October 2 and you've auto-renewed through 2028. Log in to BMI Online Services to find your exact term dates in Paragraph 1 of your agreement; older agreements sometimes carry different notice periods. If you also own a BMI publishing company, that's a separate agreement with a separate five-year term and its own notice, mailed to Publisher Administration at the same address.

What are "licenses in effect" and why do they matter?

Both ASCAP and BMI sign multi-year blanket licenses with radio groups, TV networks, streaming services, and thousands of bars and restaurants. When you leave, your old PRO retains the right to keep licensing your existing works to any music user whose license was signed and final on your resignation date, until that license expires (ASCAP Resignation FAQ; BMI Affiliation Agreement Info, 2026). During that tail period, the old PRO keeps paying you domestic royalties for those performances and your new PRO does not, even if the works are registered there.

That means for 12 to 36 months after a switch you will receive domestic performance royalties for the same song from two different PROs depending on which licensee played it. This is normal and expected. It is also the single biggest source of "my new PRO isn't paying me" panic. BMI will notify you when no licenses in effect remain; ASCAP tracks it against your removed works. Keep both portals active until the tail is fully paid out. The trap is that BMI may withhold payments until you provide "satisfactory evidence" you aren't being paid for the same performances elsewhere, so keep your registration dates and effective dates documented.

Why does the IPI database gap cost you foreign royalties?

This is the part of a PRO switch that quietly destroys income. Every songwriter has an IPI number in the international database administered by SUISA, the Swiss society. Your IPI record tells every foreign society in the world which PRO currently represents you. On your ASCAP resignation effective date, ASCAP updates IPI to show it no longer represents you as of that date; it is then your new PRO's job to claim you in IPI (ASCAP Resignation FAQ, 2025). Until that happens, foreign societies have no one to pay, and foreign money is not small: ASCAP collected $474 million from abroad in 2025, up 8.2% year over year (ASCAP, February 2026).

ASCAP's own FAQ says "significant income could be missed" if the new PRO doesn't immediately update SUISA. BMI's FAQ says the same in reverse, noting that "some societies change their records more quickly than others." Both PROs will forward any foreign money that arrives late for pre-switch performances, but neither will chase money a foreign society simply never allocated because your IPI showed no active affiliation. The fix is boring: join your new PRO before your old resignation takes effect so there is zero gap, then confirm in writing with the new PRO that your IPI has been updated within 30 days of the effective date.

What happens to your publishing company when you switch?

If you self-publish, you almost certainly have a publisher entity affiliated with the same PRO as your writer share, because U.S. PROs require the writer share and publisher share of a given interest to sit at the same society. ASCAP's FAQ is blunt: those two shares are "two parts of an inseparable whole," and you cannot remove a work from ASCAP unless both the writer interest and the corresponding publisher interest are removed. So a solo writer switching to BMI must resign the ASCAP writer membership and the ASCAP publisher membership, and request removal of the same works under both.

Then you create a new publishing entity at BMI with a different name, because PRO publisher names must be unique across the industry and your old one is still registered at ASCAP. BMI charges $150 for an individual publisher account or $250 for a company; ASCAP charges a one-time $50 for writers and publishers, while BMI writers join free (Soundcharts, 2026). If a third-party publisher controls some of your songs, they must file ASCAP's Publisher Works Removal Form to "follow the writer" or those songs stay put no matter what you do. Co-published songs can end up removed at different times or not at all, which is why ASCAP tells resigning writers to talk to every publisher before and after resigning.

Does switching PROs affect your MLC or SoundExchange royalties?

No, and yes. Your PRO only handles the performance right in your compositions. The MLC pays mechanical royalties on the same compositions, and SoundExchange pays digital performance royalties on sound recordings; neither cares which PRO you belong to. But the MLC pays the publisher of record, and if you just retired your ASCAP publisher and created a new BMI publisher with a new name and IPI, your MLC works still list the old publisher. You have to update the publisher on every registered work in the MLC Portal, and the MLC has its own matching and conflict-resolution timelines.

This is exactly where catalogs fragment. A writer switches PROs, creates a second publisher entity, forgets the MLC, and six months later has mechanicals accruing to a dormant publisher name while performance royalties flow to a new one. RoyaltyCoPilot.ai's catalog audit exists for this scenario: it cross-checks your works across the MLC, your PRO repertoire, and SoundExchange and flags every place the writer, publisher, or IPI data disagree. Run it before you switch to get a clean baseline, then again about 90 days after your effective date to catch what fell through.

Step-by-step: how to switch PROs without losing money

1. Pull your full catalog from your current PRO (ASCAP Member Access or BMI Online Services). Export every work with its ISWC, IPI numbers, publisher shares, and co-writers. This is your baseline.
2. Find your exact window. ASCAP: Profile → Membership Status shows your personalized notification window and effective date. BMI: Paragraph 1 of your affiliation agreement gives your term end; count back six and three months.
3. Talk to every co-writer and publisher on your catalog. Works with a Continuing Member-in-Interest at ASCAP, or a BMI-affiliated publisher, will not move unless they act too.
4. Decide: leave old works or remove them. Leaving them is simpler and keeps bonuses like ASCAP's TV Premium and Classic Songs Bonus intact. Removing them means the Audio Feature Premium phases out 25% per quarter over four quarters after removal (ASCAP Resignation FAQ, 2025), and you'll re-register everything.
5. Submit notice inside the window. ASCAP: online, irrevocable. BMI: signed paper form, tracked mail, postmarked in the window. Keep the receipt.
6. Join the new PRO before your effective date. Writer account plus a new, uniquely named publisher account. Ask them to confirm they will claim your IPI on the effective date.
7. Re-register works at the new PRO if you removed them, using the same ISWCs so foreign societies can match.
8. Update the MLC. Change the publisher on each work to the new entity; keep the old entity active until its last statement clears.
9. Update SoundExchange only if your payee entity changed. Otherwise leave it alone.
10. Verify IPI and watch both portals for 18 months. Statements from the old PRO under licenses in effect are normal; a foreign society paying nobody is not.

ASCAP vs BMI switching rules at a glance

What about SESAC, GMR, or a foreign society?

SESAC and Global Music Rights are invite-only, negotiate fixed-term deals with each writer, and sometimes pay advances. If you're invited, the exit rules above still apply to leaving your current PRO, but the entry rules are whatever your SESAC or GMR contract says. Read the term and the notice provision before you sign anything, because their windows can be narrower than ASCAP's and their agreements are less standardized than BMI's. A foreign society like PRS or SOCAN is a different animal: BMI's FAQ notes that if you join a non-U.S. society and designate BMI to license your U.S. performances, BMI will keep paying you under its reciprocal agreement with that society. That can be the right move for a writer living abroad with a U.S.-heavy catalog.

Whatever path you take, the principle is the same: the money follows the data, not the paperwork. A PRO switch is a data migration with a legal wrapper. Treat the IPI update, the publisher rename, and the MLC re-pointing as the actual job, and the resignation letter as the formality. RoyaltyCoPilot.ai was built for exactly this kind of cross-registry check, and the free catalog audit will show you where your writer and publisher records already disagree before you add a second PRO to the mix.

Frequently asked questions

Can I be a member of both ASCAP and BMI at the same time?

Not as a writer for new works; each work's writer share sits at one PRO. But after a switch you will effectively have works at both for years, because your old PRO keeps licensing your existing catalog if you chose to leave it there, or under licenses in effect if you removed it. Many working writers have a legacy catalog at one PRO and current works at another.

How long does it take to switch from ASCAP to BMI?

Between three and fifteen months depending on timing. You wait for your ASCAP notification window (up to nine months away), then wait for the effective date (three months after the window closes). Works removal can lag further if publishers need to file removal forms. Join BMI before the effective date so there is no IPI gap.

Will I lose royalties when I switch PROs?

You will not lose royalties for performances that occurred before your effective date; both PROs pay those out on their normal schedules. You can lose foreign royalties if your IPI isn't updated promptly, and you can lose ASCAP Audio Feature Premium bonuses on removed works, which phase out over four quarters (ASCAP Resignation FAQ, 2025).

Do I need a new publishing company name when I switch?

Yes, if you self-publish. Your publisher entity must be affiliated with the same PRO as your writer share, and publisher names must be unique. You'll create a new publisher at the new PRO and update the MLC and any distributor or admin to point at it.

Does switching PROs change my MLC registration?

Your MLC membership doesn't change, but the publisher listed on your works may need to. If you created a new publisher entity at your new PRO, update each work in the MLC Portal so mechanicals route to the active publisher. RoyaltyCoPilot.ai's audit flags works where the MLC publisher no longer matches your PRO records.

Can I undo an ASCAP resignation?

Only with ASCAP's express written consent. The Compendium treats notice of resignation as irrevocable, so be certain before you click. BMI's paper notice is similarly binding once postmarked within the window.

Does BMI's private equity ownership affect my payments?

BMI has said its goal is to distribute about 85% of licensing revenue, retaining roughly 15% for overhead and profit, versus a historical operating cost near 10% (Royalty Exchange, 2025). It no longer publishes full financials (Billboard, February 2026). Whether that translates to lower payouts for your specific catalog depends on your mix of performances and BMI's bonus rules, not just the headline percentage.

What's the cheapest way to switch?

Leave your existing catalog at your old PRO, join the new one for future works only, and skip the removal process entirely. It costs $50 at ASCAP or $0 to $250 at BMI, avoids the bonus phase-out, and eliminates most of the publisher paperwork. The cost is administrative: two portals, two 1099s, two sets of statements forever.

---

Sources: ASCAP Resignation FAQ and Compendium of Rules (effective Sept. 19, 2025); BMI Affiliation Agreement Info (updated Aug. 20, 2026); ASCAP 2025 Financial Results press release (Feb. 12, 2026); Billboard (Feb. 2026); Music Week (Nov. 2023); Royalty Exchange (2025); Soundcharts (2026).