YourVoice.Now Summary
Corporate BenefitsLets independent musicians earning under $1 million a year bargain collectively with big streaming and AI platforms without antitrust risk.
Corporate Benefits
- Antitrust safe harbor — Small-revenue musicians (under $1M/year) may jointly negotiate with dominant online platforms
The details
Independent musicians who earn less than $1 million a year in licensing revenue could join together to negotiate — or even collectively refuse to license their music to — large streaming platforms and AI companies without risking antitrust lawsuits, under this bill. Under current law, artists coordinating on pricing or contract terms with each other could be accused of illegal price-fixing, even though major record labels already have that kind of leverage individually. The safe harbor would apply only to platforms earning more than $100 million a year from music distribution, and negotiations would have to be nondiscriminatory and open to all similarly situated independent creators. The bill does not weaken antitrust law generally — it carves out a narrow exception specifically for small, independent music creators dealing with dominant platforms.
Congressional Summary
Protect Working Musicians Act of 2026This bill allows certain individual music creator owners to collectively negotiate music licensing terms with dominant online music distribution platforms or companies engaged in development or deployment of generative artificial intelligence, including the right to collectively refuse to license their music to such platforms or companies.Individual music creator owners include musicians, producers, and technicians who own the copyright to a recording and either (1) earned less than $1 million in associated revenues during the prior year, or (2) qualify as a record production and distribution small business.Dominant online music distribution platforms include interactive online services with annual revenues from music distribution of more than $100 million. Generative artificial intelligence includes artificial intelligence systems that are capable of producing novel text, video, images, audio, and other media based on prompts or other forms of inputted data.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- House
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in House
- Action Date
- 2026-05-21
- Date Added
- 2026-07-19
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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