Private Equity Firms Now Own the Organizations That Pay Songwriters. Almost Nobody Outside the Industry Noticed.

Four organizations handle licensing music for public performance and paying songwriters when it is played: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR. As of this year, three of the four are owned not by their members or by music-industry operators, but by private equity and financial-investor firms. BMI was acquired by New Mountain Capital in a deal completed in early 2024, reported at roughly $1.7 billion. GMR, launched in 2013 by Irving Azoff, has since seen its majority ownership pass to Hellman and Friedman. SESAC has spent recent years fielding acquisition interest from private equity suitors as well. ASCAP alone remains a nonprofit owned by its own songwriter and publisher members.

The shift matters because performing rights organizations are not neutral utilities. They set licensing terms and increasingly are being asked to define how AI training and synthetic voice rights intersect with the royalties they distribute. A member-owned nonprofit has a straightforward incentive: maximize what flows back to songwriters. A private-equity-owned PRO has a different one layered on top, generating a return for the fund that bought it.

Several songwriter groups have raised concerns about exactly this tension in the context of BMI's ownership change, noting that BMI owns no copyrights and exists solely to license and distribute royalties on behalf of writers who had no vote in who now owns the organization negotiating on their behalf. Related: Who Owns the Song?