The American Music Fairness Act still has a path in the 119th Congress, with bipartisan sponsors, committee support and a direct-licensing fix that could matter for performers.
The American Music Fairness Act is still alive in the 119th Congress, and that alone makes it worth watching as lawmakers head into the final stretch of the year. The bill has not cleared committee. It is not on the President’s desk. But it remains in play, and the politics around it are more developed than they are for most music bills that stall in Washington.
What AMFA would change for terrestrial radio
The core argument behind AMFA is straightforward: when terrestrial radio uses a sound recording to make money, the people who made that recording should be paid. That is not how the law works now in the United States.
Songwriters and music publishers already receive public-performance royalties when AM/FM radio plays a song. Recording artists, background singers, session musicians and owners of the sound recording do not receive a terrestrial performance royalty. Digital radio services already pay sound-recording performance royalties. AMFA, filed as S. 326 in the Senate and H.R. 861 in the House, would extend the Section 106(6) sound-recording performance right to terrestrial audio transmissions and bring AM/FM broadcasts into the Section 114 statutory licensing system.
The bill is also designed to blunt the familiar small-station argument. Under S. 326, a qualifying station with less than $100,000 in annual revenue would pay $10 a year. Public broadcasters with revenues between $100,000 and $1.5 million would pay $100 a year, while other qualifying stations in that range would pay $500. Those protections are limited to genuinely smaller operations, with aggregate revenue caps that include the owner and affiliated entities. For everyone else, the Copyright Royalty Judges would set the rate.
Congress has also told the judges they may consider radio’s “exposure” value in that rate-setting process. That matters. The bill does not pretend the promotional value of radio does not exist. It turns that claim into something that can be tested in a real proceeding instead of a permanent free-use argument for large broadcasters.
The direct-license fix is the part artists should watch
One of AMFA’s more important features is easy to miss if you only look at the headline royalty fight. The bill closes a potential direct-licensing loophole. If a copyright owner directly licenses transmissions that otherwise could have been made under the Section 114 statutory license, the broadcaster cannot use that deal to contract performers out of their statutory share.
Instead, the transmitting entity must pay 50 percent of the applicable direct-license royalties to SoundExchange, which then distributes the money under the statutory performer allocations. That is a meaningful protection. It keeps AMFA from becoming just another revenue stream that flows to record companies and maybe, eventually, to artists after recoupment and contract deductions. The statute preserves a direct payment path for featured and nonfeatured performers.
For artists and session players who have spent years watching terrestrial radio generate value without a corresponding sound-recording royalty, that detail is the point. It is also one of the stronger parts of the bill.
Where the whip count stands now
AMFA is not moving on autopilot. Neither chamber has reported the bill. The broadcast lobby remains a serious obstacle. But the Senate lineup is not random, and that matters in a Congress where committee power can decide whether a bill lives or dies.
S. 326 is led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and now includes Thom Tillis (R-NC), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA). That gives the bill a 3-3 Republican-Democratic split among its named supporters. Tillis chairs the Senate Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee, and Schiff is its ranking member. That is not the same thing as a full whip count, but it is not nothing either.
The Senate also held an IP Subcommittee hearing on terrestrial performance rights in December, with Gene Simmons and SoundExchange President Michael Huppe making the case for performers and broadcasters arguing the other side. The House version, H.R. 861, is sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and has bipartisan support that includes Jerry Nadler and Ted Lieu. It has picked up additional cosponsors since introduction, though it has not been reported from Judiciary.
That leaves the calendar. There is not much runway left in the 119th Congress, and a conventional committee-to-floor path is getting harder by the week. But Congress returns after the November elections, and that is where the bill could still find movement before January 3, 2027, when unfinished legislation dies.
For now, AMFA is not close enough to call done. It is still alive, still bipartisan, and still one of the few music copyright fights in Washington with a real institutional foothold.
Why the year-end window still matters
The broadcast lobby has spent years fighting a terrestrial sound-recording royalty. That fight is not going away. What AMFA has going for it is a committee structure, named sponsors in both chambers, and a direct-licensing fix that keeps the performer issue in the bill instead of burying it in contract language.
That is why the post-Labor Day stretch matters. The bill has not advanced, but it has not disappeared either. In a Congress where most music legislation never gets this far, that is enough to keep the pressure on.
