Skip to content
Patrick Crowley

BMI

A decade of web work for one of the world’s largest music rights organizations.

A prototype BMI.com home page from 2009, with a large artist photo, What’s New stories, and sidebars for careers, licensing, events, and music genres
A 2009 redesign of BMI.com, prototyped in HTML and jQuery.
A prototype Join BMI page with an artist banner and buttons for songwriters and music publishers
The redesign’s Join BMI page.
A prototype member benefits page with discounts, career opportunities, and services
The redesign’s member benefits page.

For about ten years, I was one of BMI’s primary web developers. BMI collects royalties for more than 375,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers, and BMI.com is where many of them start their careers. I worked for David Bills, alongside Eric Miller and Peter Ripley.

I started on BMI.com itself: moving it onto ExpressionEngine, building templates and features for MusicWorld, events, podcasts, and video, and later prototyping a cleaner redesign in 2009. Along the way, I also built Songwriter 101, a site where music business pros helped new songwriters learn the business.

A lot of the work was behind the scenes. I moved the site into Subversion and set up automated deploys, bundled and trimmed its JavaScript, cleaned up its licensing FAQs, and built image tools for its editors.

Later, I designed and built mobile versions of BMI.com, starting with a jQTouch web app in 2010. In 2013, I built a responsive media player that showed photos and video at much larger sizes, in a widget on any page or full screen.

Four screens from BMI’s mobile app design, showing the home, creators, join, and licensing sections with a tab bar along the bottom
Designs for BMI’s mobile app, 2010. Built with jQTouch.
BMI’s full-screen media player, with a large video still of BMI’s CEO, a caption sidebar, and sharing options
A responsive media player for BMI.com, 2013.
The media player showing a large photo of a band with its caption and sharing options
The same player, in photo gallery mode.
The BMI.com home page in 2007, with a podcast banner, news, a MusicWorld feature on Merle Haggard, and a calendar
The BMI.com home page in 2007.
BMI’s MusicWorld magazine page in 2007, with features, hit makers, and music people
MusicWorld, BMI’s online magazine.
The BMI Events page in 2007, with upcoming showcases and workshops by city and a calendar
BMI Events, with showcases and workshops around the country.
The BMI.com home page in 2009, with musicians on stage, member links, news and advice, and a row of BMI artists
The BMI.com home page in 2009.