# What This Bill Is Really About

This is a statement from Congress saying that musicians deserve to be paid more fairly when their songs are streamed on services like Spotify. Right now, artists make an average of just 0.7 cents per stream—so a song would need to be played over 140 times to earn a single dollar. Meanwhile, streaming services like Spotify are making billions of dollars in revenue from the music that artists created. The bill argues this is unfair and that the federal government should create a new system to pay musicians better.

The core problem the bill highlights is that streaming has completely changed how people listen to music, but the payment system hasn't kept up. When people bought physical CDs or digital downloads, artists made more money per sale. But streaming pays way less, even though it's now the dominant way people consume music—accounting for about 83 percent of all recorded music revenue. The bill also points out that backup musicians and other non-featured performers get paid nothing at all when their work is streamed, even though they contributed to making the recording.

If this bill were to become law, it would establish a new royalty program where streaming services would be required to contribute money into a fund. That fund would then distribute payments to all musicians whose work gets streamed, not just the famous headliners. The bill suggests that an organization called SoundExchange, which already handles some music payments, would manage this system. The goal is to make sure that when you listen to a song on Spotify, a fair portion of what Spotify makes actually goes to the people who created that music.

It's important to note that this bill is just Congress expressing an opinion about what should happen—it's not actually creating a new law yet. For that to happen, Congress would need to pass actual legislation. But the bill does signal that lawmakers think the current system is broken and that musicians, especially those who aren't superstars, are getting squeezed out of money they deserve.

Expressing the sense of Congress that it is the duty of the Federal Government to establish a new royalty program to provide income to featured and non-featured performing artists whose music or audio content is listened to on streaming music services, like Spotify.

Tlaib, Rashida

 <p>This concurrent resolution expresses the sense of Congress that it is the duty of the federal government to establish a new statutory royalty program that </p> <ul> <li> provides musicians whose recorded work is listened to on streaming music services reasonable remuneration through a royalty payment earned on a per-stream basis,</li> <li>ensures streaming music services compensate musicians at fair rates that are not significantly lower than rates earned on traditional physical record sales, and</li> <li> avoids falling behind in investing in musicians within the United States compared to other countries that have already proposed legislation to address inequalities in the music industry. </li> </ul> <p>The concurrent resolution also expresses that such statutory royalty program should be </p> <ul> <li>administered by SoundExchange and the Copyright Royalty Board, who will together calculate, collect, retain, and distribute the royalty payments to all eligible musicians whose recorded work is listened to on streaming music services; and </li> <li>funded by mandatory pro rata contributions collected by SoundExchange from eligible providers of music-streaming service with the option for SoundExchange to request additional direct public funding.</li> </ul>