Musicians Living Wage Congress

Living Wage for Musicians bill aims to increase streaming royalties for artists.

Two House Representatives, Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, have presented a new bill to the United States Congress aimed at increasing streaming royalties for artists. The Living Wage for Musicians Act suggests the creation of the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund, which would provide artists with a new payment system, bypassing record labels and other intermediaries, to ensure that listeners’ money goes directly to the artists themselves. Tlaib stated that “it’s only right that the people who create the music we love get their fair share, so that they can thrive, not just survive.” Under the Act, funding for the new system would come from two sources: an additional subscription fee (somewhere between $4 and $10) and a 10% cut of streamers’ non-subscription revenue, such as advertisement income.

The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) is supporting the bill, citing the fact that streaming platforms are planning to increase their subscription fees as a reason to introduce a proposal that guarantees additional fees go to musicians. Damon Krukowski, a representative of UMAW, emphasized that “we need to return value to recordings by injecting more money into the system, and we need to pay artists and musicians directly for streaming their work.” It remains unclear how much support the bill will receive as it progresses through the US Congress.