BMG | Berlin, 08/17/2017

Songwriters Join in to Create New BMG App

BMG has made its highly regarded royalties portal MyBMG available as an app for Android and iOS for the first time. It means that thousands of BMG songwriters will be able to see up-to-date worldwide information on the value and source of their income from their songs worldwide wherever and whenever they want to.

The app was engineered by BMG’s technology team in consultation with a team of BMG songwriter clients including Grammy-nominated songwriter Jenn Decilveo ("Rise Up"), Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart, and Broadway composer Maury Yeston.

Anke Becker, the Project Leader of MyBMG said: "It was a very different experience from the usual process of software development. We were working hand-in-hand with songwriters trying to tease out exactly the information that is most important to them and then ensuring we present that data in as accessible a way as possible. The result, we believe, is the most user friendly royalties application on the market. We wanted to not only make the most transparent product, but to also make the process of creating and innovating the product transparent and inclusive."

Sophisticated Features

The new app is based on the latest MyBMG 3.0 web portal launched in March this year. Both are built on the newest tech standards and include sophisticated features such as current period (pipeline) royalty information and highly intuitive analytics to give clients meaningful insights into their earnings by song, country and source, as well as trends. The web portal and app have been designed based on the input and feedback of BMG songwriters, managers, publisher clients. Anke Becker said that BMG took pains to ensure that its panel of expert songwriters which consulted on the design of the new app represented a wide range of different clients.

Before the end of the year, the portal’s features will be expanded to BMG’s recorded business, enabling not only songwriters and music authors but also BMG recording artists to profit from MyBMG and get an insight of the income from their songs worldwide.

Songwriter and hit producer Dave Stewart said: "This is a great tool and a wonderful move forward towards helping songwriters understand where they stand, something that has been badly needed since the dawn of copyright. I am proud to be part of the BMG family making steps towards a better future for creatives and leading the way in fair trade for artists."

Songwriter and publisher Maury Yeston said: "It is incredible how far we have come from the old days of paper royalty statements. I am really pleased to have been given the opportunity to bring a real songwriter’s point of view to the design of the new BMG app. It’s the kind of collaborative approach I like about BMG. I am certain that the involvement of us songwriters will give a far more authentic and personal experience for users of the app."

Delivering as Much Transparency as Possible to Artists And Songwriters

MyBMG was part of the original plan for BMG when it launched in 2008 to utilize the power of digital to deliver more transparency to artists and songwriters. It evolved from a basic statement download service at the time through two further iterations into today’s highly configurable, graphically sophisticated, constantly updated version 3.0.

Sebastian Hentzschel, SVP Group Technology at BMG says: "MyBMG is the centerpiece of our drive to empower songwriters by giving them the information they need to manage their careers. The introduction of the mobile app is just a natural continuation to our unrelenting effort to service our artists with the transparency and fairness they deserve. We are going to continuously push out new, amazing features in the coming months and years."