Record Breaking Year for Island Hopper Songwriters Festival

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) the global leader in music rights management, was pleased to sponsor the fifth annual Island Hopper Songwriters Festival presented by the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau and co-sponsored by iHeartMedia. The ten-day festival spanned across Captiva Island, Fort Myers Beach and Downtown Fort Myers from Friday, September 21st to Sunday, September 30th and supported the local bars, restaurants and hotels while also promoting music creators and songwriters.

The 2018 Island Hopper Songwriters Fest attracted record-breaking crowds to Southwest Florida with attendance up by more than 20 percent. The festival featured nearly 80 BMI songwriters performing in 25 venues. The goal of the festival is to shine a spotlight on the craft of songwriting, while helping jump-start the local economy during a typically slow time of year by filling the hotel rooms and helping give back to BMI-licensed businesses in Southwest Florida who have supported BMI songwriters over the years through the licensing fees they pay.

A full list of songwriters can be found here.

Celebrating over 78 years of service to songwriters, composers, music publishers and businesses, Broadcast Music, Inc.® (BMI®) is a global leader in music rights management, serving as an advocate for the value of music. BMI represents the public performance rights in 14 million musical works created and owned by more than 900,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers. The Company negotiates music license agreements and distributes the fees it generates as royalties to its affiliated writers and publishers when their songs are performed in public. In 1939, BMI created a groundbreaking open-door policy becoming the only performing rights organization to welcome and represent the creators of blues, jazz, country, and American roots music. Today, the musical compositions in BMI's repertoire, from chart toppers to perennial favorites, span all genres of music and are consistently among the most-performed hits of the year. For additional information and the latest BMI news, visit bmi.com, follow us on Twitter @BMI or stay connected through Broadcast Music, Inc.'s Facebook page. Sign up for BMI's The Weekly™ and receive our e-newsletter every week to stay up to date on all things music.

Image: BMI songwriters and country music stars LOCASH perform in Downtown Fort Myers at The 2018 Island Hopper Songwriters Fest. Photo by Brian Tietz

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