There are a handful of pending bills before the 119th Congress that are being closely watched by the music industry. These pieces of federal legislation could affect artists, consumers and companies across many different areas of the business, including songwriting, licensing, tourism, royalties, ticketing and live performances.
Many of these bills have bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and industry players have been heavily involved in advocating for their passage: The Recording Academy and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have signed onto many of them, as have corporate giants like the major record labels and Live Nation.
In the interest of compiling all the information in one place, Billboard has put together a list of all the music-related legislation currently before the 119th Congress. Below, you can read about the history behind each bill, who supports it and what impact it would have on the industry.
RAP Act: First introduced in 2022, the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act aims to limit the use of rap lyrics in federal prosecutions. It’s long been controversial to cite lyrics as evidence of a crime, but the prosecutorial strategy has received a spotlight in recent years as it’s been wielded against high-profile rappers like Young Thug, Gunna and Lil Durk.
NO FAKES Act: The Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act is Congress’ attempt to protect artists from artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes. This legislation would turn a person’s digital likeness into a form of intellectual property, allowing artists to license out these rights and sue those that publish deepfakes without their consent.
American Music Fairness Act: Legislators and music industry players have been trying for decades to pass a law requiring terrestrial radio stations to pay performance royalties to artists and record labels. The latest version of this proposed law was introduced in 2021 as the American Music Fairness Act, which has since been re-introduced twice.
The bills aim to close a loophole that allows AM/FM radio stations in the U.S. to only pay publishing royalties – unlike satellite radio stations and online streamers, which have to compensate both songwriters and performers when they play a track.
TRAIN Act: The Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act, first introduced in the Senate in 2024, would create a legal avenue for musicians and other creators to find out if their work was used to train a generative AI model without a license. Technically speaking, the bill would allow artists to subpoena AI developers for their training data through a process similar to one that already exists to combat internet piracy.
It remains an open question whether AI companies are legally required to buy licenses to train their models on existing creative works. Numerous copyright lawsuits over this issue are currently making their way through the courts, including one by the major record labels (though some claims have been settled through licensing deals with AI music services Suno and Udio).
CLEAR Act: Another AI training-focused bill is the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting (CLEAR) Act, which would require tech companies to submit publicly available reports to the U.S. Copyright Office detailing all the protected works used in training data for generative AI models. The legislation also suggests an enforcement mechanism: civil fines for AI companies that fail to complete these disclosures.
Source: Billboard. Rachel Scharf. MUSIC-RELATED LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS RIGHT NOW-legislation/
