Yesterday President Donald Trump signed the eagerly anticipated Music Modernization Act into law.
The bill, which received unanimous support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers in its passage of the Senate and House, aims to update US music copyright and licensing laws for the digital and streaming era.
Specifically, H.R. 1551 (formally the “Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act”) accomplishes three key things:
- it simplify the process through which rights holders get paid when their music is streamed online;
- it guarantees streaming royalty payments to artists and songwriters for songs recorded before 1972;
- it ensure better royalty payouts for record producers and engineers from SoundExchange when their recordings are used on satellite and online radio (this is the first time producers have ever been mentioned in US copyright law).
You can read the full text of the H.R.1551 here.
“The Music Modernization Act closes loopholes in our digital royalties laws to ensure that songwriters, artists and producers receive fair payment for licensing of music,” Trump said just before signing the law. “I’ve been reading about this for many years and never thought I’d be involved in it, but I got involved in it. They were treated very unfairly. They’re not going to be treated unfairly anymore.”
Watch the signing of the MMA below! (Video starts at 31:58)
