Music Industry

BMI

Two decades of design for a global leader in music rights management

All work

Music Industry

BMI

Two decades of design for a global leader in music rights management

All work

The Client

BMI serves as an advocate for the value of music, representing over 22.4 million musical works created and owned by more than 1.4 million songwriters, composers and music publishers.

BMI was founded in 1939 by forward-thinkers who wanted to represent songwriters in emerging genres, like jazz, blues and country, and protect the public performances of their music.

Outcome

Enterprise web platforms, editorial content, large-scale repertoire database redesign

Approach

UX design, web design and development, content production, CMS, long-term product partnership

Focus

Evolving complex, content-heavy systems supporting the music community through multiple eras of the web

The Relationship

From early web to modern platforms

My work with BMI spans 20 years. I was a full-time designer and editor during the early days of bmi.com (1999–2008), and later as a long-term consultant. This continuity allowed me to apply deep knowledge of the organization to my ongoing design work.

The Work

Designing for scale and varied audiences

Across multiple generations of BMI’s digital presence, my role consistently centered on making large, complex systems understandable and usable. This included website design, songwriter-focused education platforms, and design for internal and public-facing tools. This work required close collaboration across design, editorial, development, and leadership. The challenges are relevant today: enterprise level products, a broad range of audiences, and integrating with a large team across an organization.

Featured Project

SongView database UX and UI

BMI’s repertoire database is one of the most heavily used tools in the organization, and my most recent work with the organization. This mission-critical system is used by songwriters, publishers, and industry professionals worldwide. The redesign focused on clarifying complex search and filtering behaviors, modernizing the UI without disrupting established workflows, and ensuring scalability for an ever-growing catalog. The result is a cleaner, more usable interface.

Beyond Design

Editorial, content, and storytelling

In addition to UX, design and development, I worked across a wide variety of areas: writer, editor, photographer and video production. This blend of design and content experience still informs my studio work today, enabling me to advise on all areas of a product and treating content, structure, and interface as a single system.