Rep Tlaib Issues a Letter Calling for Congress to Create a New Streaming Royalty
According to Rolling Stone, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib has sent a letter to Congress acknowledging the dire economic situation of US working musicians, and proposing new regulation of streaming services to pay artists direct royalties. Rep Tlaib’s forthcoming Resolution on the issue comes at the behest of efforts of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers to repair the broken streaming economy.
Today, Representative Rashida Tlaib sent a Dear Colleague Letter to Congress announcing her intention to propose a Congressional Resolution to create a new streaming royalty. Acknowledging the dire economic circumstances faced by US working musicians, Representative Tlaib argued that Congress must take action to regulate the tech giants that have come to dominate the music industry.
The Letter states that, “While the music industry has experienced an economic revival with the success of streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music, the current lack of regulation or codified streaming music royalty program has driven a race to the bottom. Streaming music platforms’ payouts per stream are miniscule, and declining each year—leaving working musicians with little of the income generated by these platforms.”
In an interview with Jon Blistein at Rolling Stone, Representative Tlaib recalled how the resolution came out of her work with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers: “More than a year ago we were contacted by folks from the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) about their Justice at Spotify campaign, and when we met it was really clear how efforts to pay musicians fairly for their work tied in to so many different threads of justice we were already working on. UMAW and our team did a great job connecting the dots on how this would help thousands of people in my district directly. Detroit is a global music capitol, giving the world Motown and techno and vital contributions to other genres like rock, jazz, and gospel, and we wanted to do something that honored and respected the incredible work of musicians in Detroit and across the country.”
The resolution calls for the creation of a new streaming royalty that will be paid directly to artists, similar to how satellite radio royalties are currently paid out via SoundExchange.
“UMAW has been working toward this legislation for over two years,” said UMAW organizer Joey La Neve DeFrancesco. “Tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and others have sent music industry profits skyrocketing, but working musicians aren’t seeing any of that money. It’s time that we get our fair share.”
UMAW is calling for all musicians, music workers, and fans to ask their Representatives to sign on and co-sponsor the resolution.