How ACA is different...

The American Composers Alliance is a membership organization as well as a music publisher.

Can anyone join ACA?

Membership in ACA is limited to composers writing music at a professional level of expertise, determined through an application process. There are no stylistic limitations for determining membership. The Board of Governors meets twice per year to review all applications received.

ACA has a BMI-affiliated publishing imprint, American Composers Edition, and registers ACA-composer's works to this imprint for tracking performances and generating royalty payments from BMI. Composers eligible for membership at ACA must be BMI-affiliated composers.

Why BMI? 

ACA and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) have been working together since the early years of the modern music business in the United States, to help professionalize the status of working contemporary classical music composers.

Prior to the formation of ACA in the late 1930s and subsequently BMI in the 1940s, there were very few choices in terms of membership organizations that could collect fees for licensing public performances of music by classical composers.

ACA started as a union of sorts. Its early catalog included works by composers who could not find representation elsewhere, or representation they trusted. Within a short span of time, ACA amassed a roster of composers that, in due course, became some of the most well-known music names in the United States, and was arguably the only organization that largely represented concert music by women and African American composers in those early years.

As a publisher...

Classical contemporary music publishing has seen many cycles of varied success over the years. While most publishers choose to represent a single piece or a few pieces from a composer's oeuvre, ACA's model from the start has been to accept for publication all works by its members that are otherwise unpublished by commercial publishers.

Consolidating works with just one publisher makes rights and permissions acquisitions much easier for performers and for researchers and authors who wish to display a composer's work in public. Many pieces are lost from memory because of the difficult road blocks of getting rights and permissions, often due to publishers closing business, or  losing contact with estates and heirs.

ACA's publishing model simplifies these issues, first, by maintaining that its composers retain their copyright for their ACA works, and second, by establishing an official status for scores on deposit that reflects the composer's wishes for how they can be made available to the public in the future.

How can ACA be a publisher without owning copyrights?

It's the best of both worlds for the composer. Works by ACA composers that are registered with BMI are listed as being published by ACA with all the privileges of commercial publication. The composer grants ACA the right to distribute copies of the music and to collect fees for other licensed uses, but in the end, the composer and his or her heirs control the copyrights.

There is never a lock on your ACA scores. If a composer wishes to reassign a piece to another publisher, they are free to do so at any point.

A non-profit organization as music publisher?

Since 2006, ACA has begun to create a new model for publishing this repertoire in a way that supports the composer, but also considers the needs of performing ensembles and  researchers, by keeping our catalog of works on deposit in perpetuity with a large university music library.

In addition to archival management, ACA is scanning and collecting digital music prints in creation of a virtual music library, so that physical scores need not be shipped anywhere for printing, but can remain safe in the archive repository. If, in the future, ACA no longer manages publication, the scores and digital library will remain on deposit at the University of Maryland (College Park), to be maintained there by a knowledgeable staff of music archivists.

*In order to be heard, music must be performed, and to be performed, the scores and performing materials need to be available. ACA pledges to make every effort to keep its catalog alive, that is, available--as long as there are people who want to use it.*

Why Maryland?

Located near Washington, D.C., The University of Maryland at College Park is a large research institution with state-of-the-art library facilities. It's Special Collections in Performing Arts Library (SCPA) is one of the premier archives for circulating collections of performance scores, and includes The Contemporary Music Project (CMP), the International Clarinet Association, and the International Piano Archives. It is one of very few repositories that can envision the future benefits of taking on a project that involves circulating materials from Special Collections. Most libraries would have happily taken the ACA score collection and locked it away for research-only access. Because of SCPA's commitment to the project, the ACA score collection is alive and thriving.

ACA's score collection at the University of Maryland numbers over 10,000 titles of music. Beyond the scores, ACA also owns an archive of composer history files that contain biographical, business, and publishing documents for more than 700 American composers who have been members of ACA at some point since the 1930s.

The composer history files at ACA have been inventoried and are available for research. These files will eventually become part of the ACA collection at the University of Maryland, where it will be managed by the library's Special Collections curators.

Open door policy...

ACA is managed by a small, but knowledgeable staff, and has low overhead expenses. The majority of income generated through royalties, sales, rentals, and donations is in turn applied back into the programs and services for members.

The annual festival of music presented each June is a showcase for ACA composers and invited guest composers, and is produced entirely by ACA staff and membership, with contributions from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, NYSCA, the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, Yamaha Artist Services, and BMI.

As a non-profit public charitable organization, ACA's financial information is available for public inspection at any time. Board members are elected by the general membership, and both board members and members serve on committees that directly shape the mission of the organization and manage the essential programs for the organization.

Please contact us if you are interested in ACA publishing membership, custodial membership, or would like to become involved with our organization.

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