Ascap, the music licensing agency, is in one sense fighting for its survival, seeking to change decades-old rules to fit the economics of online music. In another, it is finding ways to distribute more money than ever to its thousands of songwriters.

According to preliminary results announced on Tuesday, Ascap had just over $1 billion in revenue in 2014 — the first time that Ascap or any organization like it has raised so much.

Ascap — the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers — collects royalties whenever the more than 10 million songs it represents are played by radio or TV broadcasters, streamed online, or performed in concert. After deducting its operating expenses, Ascap last year paid a total of $883 million to its members, up nearly 4 percent from 2013.

Ascap, whose more than 500,000 members include stars like Beyoncé and Beck, as well as thousands of music publishers, will publish final, audited results later in the year.

Among the most surprising figures in Ascap’s report are that in 2014 it tracked 500 billion performances of songs, twice as many as it did a year ago.

Online music is growing extremely fast. According to Nielsen, the amount of streaming last year through so-called on-demand services like Spotify and YouTube, which let people choose exactly what songs they listen to, was up 54.5 percent from the year before.

But Ascap has also increased its capacity to identify each of these performances, and collect licensing revenue from them. According to Ascap, it has identified more than 1.3 million pieces of music that were played last year on digital streaming services — some 30 times more than it was able to recognize in 2013 — and as a result it has paid nine times as many songwriters for their work.

“Ascap had an incredibly successful 2014,” Elizabeth Matthews, the organization’s new chief executive, said in a statement. “We worked extremely hard and continually innovated in order to maximize the financial opportunities for our members in the face of an evolving and increasingly competitive global landscape.”

According to Ascap, the amount of money it collected from sources in the United States grew 6.7 percent last year, and international revenue increased nearly 5 percent. Among other growth areas was television, thanks in part to a number of new licensing agreements.

The way that Ascap and BMI, its archrival, handle licensing is regulated by the federal government, a result of antitrust investigations in the 1940s. This regulation has become a heavily debated topic as online outlets like Pandora grow, with songwriters and music publishers complaining that the old rules result in unfair low royalty rates.

In a trial last year, a federal judge dealt a blow to Ascap and major music publishers by keeping Pandora’s royalty rate unchanged, and criticizing the publishers for coordinating with Ascap during negotiations. (Pandora is involved in a similar trial against BMI.)

Next Tuesday, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee will hold a hearing on Ascap and BMI’s consent decrees. Among the witnesses expected to speak is Ms. Matthews.