A2IM Applauds Congressman Mel Watt

On Thursday July 26th Congress’ House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet held a hearing on “Innovation in America: The Role of Copyrights.” In his introductory comments, the Committee’s Ranking Member Congressman Mel Watt (D - NC, 12th District) announced his intention to introduce legislation to enact a long overdue Performance Right Act, which would require AM/FM radio to finally pay sound recording label owners and their label’s artist’s royalties when their music is played by over-the-air radio stations, as the rest of the world currently does. This legislation will bring greater fairness to the marketplace as webcasters like Pandora, satellite radio stations like Sirius/XM, and cable services like Music Choice currently pay royalties to sound recording music creators while AM/FM radio does not. A2IM board member Tor Hansen of YepRoc/Redeye, in his testimony as part of the hearing, echoed the Congressman’s comments calling for the enactment of royalty legislation, which as Tor noted, would additionally ensure that U.S. labels and artists would start to receive their overseas radio performance royalties. U.S. labels and artists do not currently receive overseas radio performance royalties as there is no trade reciprocity since the U.S. has no such royalty right.

A2IM applauds our long-time music creator supporter Congressman Watt for his leadership and we also applaud our Independent music label colleague Tor Hansen for his outstanding representation of our community on Capitol Hill.

About A2IM:
A2IM is a not-for-profit trade organization serving the Independent music community as a unified voice representing a sector that, according to Billboard Magazine, comprises 34.5% of the music industry's market share in the United States (and almost 40% of SoundScan digital album sales). The organization represents the Independents' interests in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill, and as part of the global music community.

The organization's board of directors is composed of the following: Concord Records President Glenn Barros; Daptone Records General Manager Cathy Bauer; Smithsonian Folkways Recordings Director of Marketing & Sales Richard James Burgess; Yep Roc Records Co-Owner Tor Hansen; Alligator Records Founder/CEO Bruce Iglauer; The Beggars Group Founder/CEO Martin Mills; Kill Rock Stars President Portia Sabin; Glassnote Records General Manager Chris Scully; Naxos of America CEO Jim Selby; Dead Oceans/Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian Founder/Co-Owner Darius Van Arman; Razor & Tie COO Victor Zaraya.