Today is World Radio Day, and when most of us think of radio, we think of music. That’s why today, Congress received a letter signed by about 300 performing artists asking lawmakers to pass the long-overdue American Music Fairness Act (AMFA) this session. “Each year, AM/FM radio stations play nearly a billion songs. And each year, giant radio corporations rake in ...
Two bills are back in motion in the U.S. Congress—the AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act, and the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA). As I argued in a post for The Hill last May, if the first bill is to become law, then the second bill should also become law. While the AM radio provision arguably has some public-serving benefits, ...
As mentioned in my last post about the record labels’ lawsuits against GAI companies Suno and Udio, I will generally focus on the latter case. Both cases are almost identical, but because UMG et al. v. Ucharted Labs Inc. is at the SDNY (in the Second Circuit), those proceedings may be followed by other courts with considerably less copyright law ...
A little-known Senate resolution called the Local Radio Freedom Act (LRFA) is a clever move by whoever thought of it. It has no force of law but instead asks Congress to sign a pledge to enshrine an unfair and unfounded policy whereby terrestrial radio broadcasters shall never pay royalties to musical artists. Why? Because that’s how it’s always been. In ...
Tomorrow afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee IP Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled Radio, Music, and Copyrights: 100 Years of Inequity for Recording Artists. The subject of the hearing is—at least ostensibly—to compare and contrast the royalty granting American Radio Fairness Act (AMFA) against the royalty denying Local Radio Freedom Act (LRFA). Witnesses to testify include recording artist Randy Travis; ...
