# What the Living Wage for Musicians Act Actually Does

This bill creates a new fund designed to pay musicians directly from music streaming services. Here's how it would work in practice: streaming companies like Spotify or Apple Music would charge subscribers an extra fee—somewhere between $4 and $10 per month on top of their regular subscription cost. The streaming services would also contribute 10 percent of their ad-supported revenue. All this money goes into a central fund that then gets distributed back to musicians based on how many times their songs were streamed.

The money gets split two ways. Ninety percent goes to featured artists—the main performers whose names you see on the album cover—distributed proportionally based on their streaming numbers. The remaining 10 percent goes to backup musicians, session players, and vocalists through existing musician unions. So if you're a featured artist with 5 percent of all streams in a quarter, you'd get 5 percent of the featured artist pool. A session musician who played on multiple recordings would receive their share through the union distribution system.

The bill specifically excludes payments to AI-generated music and corporate entities, focusing only on human creators. Streaming services would be required to clearly show this extra charge on customer bills as a separate line item. They also can't count this money as part of their regular business costs or revenue calculations. A nonprofit organization would be set up to manage the fund, with a board that includes actual musicians making decisions about how it operates.

The practical effect would be that music subscribers pay more, but musicians—especially those who don't get radio play or major label support—would receive direct payments based on their actual streaming numbers rather than relying solely on the traditional royalty system that often pays very little per stream.