Congressional representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman launched the proposed Dwelling Wage for Musicians Act on Thursday, aimed toward growing streaming royalties for musicians on-line.
The decision, created in partnership with the United Musicians and Allied Staff union, calls “for financial justice and equity in streaming,” a launch from Tlaib’s workplace reads.
Per the discharge, the act “would create a brand new streaming royalty, with the purpose to compensate artists and musicians extra pretty at a penny per stream when their music performs on streaming companies.”
The report goes on to say that streaming has grown to characterize 84 p.c of recorded music trade income, however that Spotify, the main music streaming platform, solely pays a mean per-stream royalty of $0.003, that means an artist should attain 800,000 month-to-month streams to equal a full-time $15/hour job.
The proposed new royalty could be paid along with current royalties, making certain that artists obtain no less than one cent per stream with an eventual cap on the quantity of doable revenue per 30 days. The extra funds could be funded by way of a tax on the streaming platforms’ non-subscription income and a small enhance to the price of music streaming subscriptions.
Tlaib, a consultant of Detroit, mentioned in an announcement that her metropolis’s artists “have modified the music trade and our tradition in so many unimaginable methods. It’s solely proper that the individuals who create the music we love get their fair proportion, in order that they’ll thrive, not simply survive.”
Bowman, a consultant of the Bronx in New York and founding father of the Congressional Hip-Hop Job Pressure, added that “it’s unconscionable that with a purpose to purchase a cup of espresso, an artist wants somebody to stream their music over a thousand occasions. Artists and musicians throughout the nation need to be paid for his or her work.”
Tlaib and Bowman beforehand teamed up in 2022 once they launched an identical decision calling for financial justice and equity in streaming.
