This piece argues that a century-old legal gap lets AM/FM radio profit from recorded music while the performers who created that music get nothing, and it urges Congress to pass the American Music Fairness Act so working musicians finally get paid their share.
I wrote “God Bless the U.S.A.” decades ago and have never tired of singing it across small towns, stadiums, and military bases. There’s pride in watching crowds stand up when that song plays, and there’s also a clear unfairness that undercuts the people who made those moments happen.
Here’s the raw fact: when a broadcast company airs a recorded performance, it can sell advertising around that play and reap the revenue, while the artists who performed on the track get zero from those radio plays. That’s not a trade deal someone foolishly signed away; it’s a legal loophole left open for years by Congress and defended by big broadcasters’ lobbyists.
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Don’t get me wrong — radio matters. It has shaped careers, carried community voices, and connected listeners for generations. This ask isn’t about shutting down local stations or punishing hometown voices; it’s about asking the largest broadcast companies to follow the same basic rule every other platform follows: if you profit from music, pay the people who made it.
This is a simple American idea: when someone creates value, they deserve fair pay. When a farmer grows a crop, the harvest belongs to the farmer to sell. When a factory builds a product, the workers who made it receive a paycheck. Recordings should be treated the same way.
Right now, the business model favors corporate broadcasters. They build huge audiences using other people’s work, sell those listeners to advertisers, and keep the proceeds. That’s a government-enabled advantage kept in place because big radio spends millions lobbying to stop reform, not because the arrangement is fair to workers.
It hits the most overlooked people the hardest: session players, studio musicians, backup singers, and other pros whose names rarely make the marquee. They walk into a studio, do brilliant work, and then watch their performances generate revenue on the airwaves with no compensation. This isn’t charity; it’s about recognizing working artists as workers who should be paid for their labor.
Broadcasters claim radio spins function as free advertising that boosts record sales and ticket sales, so they deserve to keep the value. Even if that had been true once, it’s beside the point now because every other outlet pays for recorded music — streaming services, satellite radio, online platforms, and international stations all compensate performers. Only legacy AM/FM broadcasts get a free pass, and that gap weakens U.S. artists and invites other countries to withhold royalties in response.
Those international consequences are real. Because America refuses to pay performers for radio plays, other nations sometimes withhold royalties our artists have already earned, costing musicians hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The European Union has even talked about withholding another $287 million annually from U.S. artists unless this gets fixed, so the fallout isn’t theoretical — it’s money taken out of people’s pockets.
The American Music Fairness Act is a narrowly drawn, bipartisan fix that asks the biggest radio corporations to start paying for recorded music while protecting small, independent local broadcasters with an affordable daily fee. It’s led by Senator Marsha Blackburn and Congressman Darrell Issa, and it balances community radio’s needs with the simple demand that major players stop freeloading on other people’s work.
This is the part of the job the Music Modernization Act left unfinished. President Trump signed that reform into law and showed how to get music policy right in the streaming age. Now it’s time to finish the job and make sure performers are treated like the hard-working Americans they are — paid for their work, not forgotten because of an old loophole.
Closing this gap would be a practical act of fairness that honors the country’s promise that hard work should be rewarded. Let Congress pass the American Music Fairness Act and stop letting a century-old exception keep working musicians from their rightful pay. It’s past time to finish what others started and to do right by the people who made America’s soundtrack.
