Today Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), John Conyers (D-Mich), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ted Deutch (D-Fla), and Tom Rooney (R-Fla) introduced The Fair Play Fair Pay Act designed to help music creators get paid fairly when their music is played across various platforms, including AM/FM radio, SiriusXM and others.
The bipartisan bill has been designed to create a modern and uniform system of rules governing music licensing for digital and terrestrial radio broadcasts.
"Our current music licensing laws are antiquated and unfair, which is why we need a system that ensures all radio services play by the same rules and all artists are fairly compensated," said Representatives Nadler, Blackburn, Conyers, Issa, Deutch and Rooney. "Our laws should reward innovation, spur economic diversity and uphold the constitutional rights of creators. That is what the Fair Play Fair Pay Act sets out to accomplish: fixing a system that for too long has disadvantaged music creators and pitted technologies against each other by allowing certain services to get away with paying little or nothing to artists."
The Fair Play Fair Pay Act would:
- Create a terrestrial performance right so that AM/FM radio competes on equal footing with its Internet and satellite competitors who already pay performance royalties. This would resolve the decades old struggle for performance rights and ensure thatmusic creators would have the right to fair pay when their performances are broadcast on AM/FM radio.
- Bring true platform parity to radio so that all forms of radio, regardless of the technology they use, pay fair market value for music performances. This levels the playing field and ends the unfair and illogical distortions caused by the different royalty standards that exist today.
- Ensure terrestrial royalties are affordable capping royalties for stations with less than $1 million in annual revenue at $500 per year (and at $100 a year for non-commercial stations), while protecting religious and incidental uses of music from having to pay any royalties at all.
- Make a clear statement that pre-1972 recordings have value and those who are profiting from them must pay appropriate royalties for their use, while we closely monitor the litigation developments on this issue.
- Protect songwriters and publishers by clearly stating that nothing in this bill can be used to lower songwriting royalties.
- Codify industry practices streamlining the allocation of royalty payments to music producers.
- Ensure that artists receive their fair share from direct licensing of all performances eligible for the statutory license.