Since its founding in 1914, ASCAP had tightly controlled the licensing of songs for public broadcast, holding rights to approximately 90 percent of all music played on the radio by the late 1930s. It represented the interests of Tin Pan Alley composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and the Gershwins, and it largely excluded genres like hillbilly, blues, gospel, and other regional or minority traditions. ASCAP was frequently locked in disputes with major radio networks, including NBC, CBS, ABC, and Mutual, over royalty payments and licensing fees. As profits from radio broadcasting soared during the big band era, ASCAP intensified its legal and financial pressure on the networks, demanding a greater share of their revenue.

In response, the networks launched BMI as an alternative licensing agency. Unlike ASCAP, BMI adopted an open-door policy, welcoming songwriters and performers working outside the commercial mainstream, particularly rural Southern musicians, Black blues artists, and others ignored by ASCAP. BMI provided copyright protection, published recognition, and royalty payments to these marginalized artists, offering them professional opportunities that had long been denied.

The conflict between ASCAP and the radio networks reached a breaking point in 1941 when ASCAP called a strike, revoking broadcast rights for all music in its catalog. This action instantly removed much of the popular big band repertoire from radio, including many theme songs and arrangements. Radio programmers scrambled to fill the gap, and BMI-affiliated artists seized the opportunity. As a result, country, folk, and blues music—genres that had previously remained regional—were suddenly broadcast to national audiences.

At first, BMI’s catalog lacked the polished sophistication of ASCAP’s hitmakers. Radio stations often relied on nineteenth-century popular songs, classical music adaptations, or hastily written new material. In some cases, the licensing war reached absurd extremes. Jazz musicians known for quoting familiar melodies in solos were forced to write out and submit those solos for network approval to avoid infringement.

At the same time, another major disruption reshaped the music industry. In 1942, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), led by president James Caesar Petrillo, called a nationwide strike against record companies. The union demanded that musicians receive a share of royalties from records played on the radio and on jukeboxes, which then numbered over 400,000 nationwide. Although many musicians opposed the strike, fearing it would harm their long-term prospects, Petrillo persisted. For more than a year, no major record company released instrumental recordings. Already facing wartime shortages of shellac, the industry turned its focus to vocalists and non-union talent. Because vocalists were not yet recognized as musicians by the union, they could still record, and this gave country and blues singers an unexpected advantage.

Country musicians, many of whom were not members of the AFM, filled the vacuum. The strike inadvertently created space for artists in the hillbilly and country genres to step into the spotlight. Moreover, a wave of new record companies such as Capitol Records in Los Angeles emerged during this period, many of them eager to sign artists from outside the traditional big band circuit. Independent labels specializing in country music sprang up in cities like Nashville, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles, all of which had growing populations of Southern migrants and a hunger for regional sounds.

By the time the major labels like Columbia and Victor settled with the AFM in 1944, the musical landscape had already shifted. Swing bands, unable to sustain their visibility during the ban, were beginning to fade, and newer styles were on the rise. Meanwhile, labels like Decca and Capitol had gained momentum by signing hillbilly and R&B artists and resuming instrumental recordings ahead of the major firms.

BMI became the home for most country and western musicians in the 1940s and beyond. The organization played a critical role in legitimizing country songwriting as a professional craft, helping artists secure royalties and copyright protection for their work. The emergence of BMI not only weakened ASCAP’s monopoly, but it also helped lay the institutional groundwork for the explosive growth of country and western and R&B music in the postwar era.