State Champ Radio legislation
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A bipartisan group of U.S. senators released draft legislation Thursday (Oct. 12) aimed at protecting musical artists and others from artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes and other replicas of their likeness, like this year’s infamous “Fake Drake” song.
The draft bill – labelled the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act, or NO FAKES Act — would create a federal right for artists, actors and others to sue those who create “digital replicas” of their image, voice, or visual likeness without permission.
In announcing the bill, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) specifically cited the April release of “Heart On My Sleeve,” an unauthorized song that featured AI-generated fake vocals from Drake and The Weeknd.
“Generative AI has opened doors to exciting new artistic possibilities, but it also presents unique challenges that make it easier than ever to use someone’s voice, image, or likeness without their consent,” Coons said in a statement. “Creators around the nation are calling on Congress to lay out clear policies regulating the use and impact of generative AI.”
The draft bill quickly drew applause from music industry groups. The RIAA said it would push for a final version that “effectively protects against this illegal and immoral misappropriation of fundamental rights that protect human achievement.”
“Our industry has long embraced technology and innovation, including AI, but many of the recent generative AI models infringe on rights — essentially instruments of theft rather than constructive tools aiding human creativity,” the group wrote in the statement.
The American Association of Independent Music offered similar praise: “Independent record labels and the artists they work with are excited about the promise of AI to transform how music is made and how consumers enjoy art, but there must be guardrails to ensure that artists can make a living and that labels can recoup their investments.” The group said it would push to make sure that the final bill’s provisions were “accessible to small labels and working-class musicians, not just the megastars.”
A person’s name and likeness — including their distinctive voice — are already protected in most states by the so-called right of publicity, which allows control how your individual identity is commercially exploited by others. But those rights are currently governed by a patchwork of state statutes and common law systems.
The NO FAKES Act would create a nationwide property right in your image, voice, or visual likeness, allowing an individual to sue anyone the produced a “newly-created, computer-generated, electronic representation” of it. Unlike many state-law systems, that right would not expire at death and could be controlled by a person’s heirs for 70 years after their passing.
A tricky balancing act for any publicity rights legislation is the First Amendment and its protections for free speech. In Thursday’s announcementthe NO FAKES Act’s authors said the bill would include specific carveouts for replicas used in news coverage, parody, historical works or criticism.
“Congress must strike the right balance to defend individual rights, abide by the First Amendment, and foster AI innovation and creativity,” Coons said.
The draft was co-authored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
Proponents of the Help Independent Tracks Succeed (HITS) Act are making a renewed effort to get the bill through Congress.
On Wednesday (Sept. 27), the Recording Academy and the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) sent a letter to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and ranking member Richard Neal (D-MA) urging them to add the bill to end-of-year tax legislation.
The HITS Act would provide an extra tax break to musicians, technicians and producers for recording sessions, allowing them to deduct 100% of recording expenses up to $150,000 on their taxes in the year they’re incurred. That would be a change from the current law, which requires music creators and labels to amortize those expenses over the economic life of a sound recording, a period that usually ranges between three and four years.
“The bill is designed and tailored to specifically incentivize independent artists, songwriters and labels to produce new music, sparking important creative investments in countless music small businesses across the country,” reads the letter, signed by Recording Academy chief advocacy and public policy officer Todd Dupler and A2IM president/CEO Richard James Burgess. “This targeted approach makes the HITS Act a fiscally responsible investment in the American creative economy.”
The letter goes on to point out that film, TV and live theatrical productions all enjoy the option of fully deducting production costs in the year they’re incurred and argues that music productions should get the same treatment. For independent creators and labels, being forced to amortize expenses “slows down their reinvestment in new projects that can fuel growth,” the letter adds.
Speaking to Billboard last year, Burgess put it in starker terms, noting that specifically for independents, “getting $150,000 per project [that can be] written off against your taxes in the year that you incurred it, could really make a difference between being able to make another record next year or not.”
The bipartisan HITS Act was first introduced in the House on July 31, 2020 (followed by a companion bill in the Senate on Dec. 3, 2020), though it failed to pass as part of the two pandemic relief packages or as part of the $3.5 billion budget reconciliation package known as Build Back Better, which was ultimately halved and renamed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 before being signed into law in August 2022. A similar lobbying effort at the end of last year to pass the bill ahead of the changeover to a new, split Congress — Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January while Democrats held the Senate — also failed.
Read the full letter below.
Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Neal:
On behalf of independent music makers and record labels we call on the Committee of Ways and Means to advance into law the bipartisan and bicameral Help Independent Tracks Succeed (HITS) Act (H.R. 1259) as part of any tax policy package considered before the end of the year. The HITS Act is a low-cost and commonsense modification to existing U.S. tax law that will incentivize the production of new sound recordings and songwriter demos by allowing qualified productions to deduct 100% of their costs upfront. With an annual deduction limit of $150,000, the bill is designed and tailored to specifically incentivize independent artists, songwriters and labels to produce new music, sparking important creative investments in countless music small businesses across the country. This targeted approach makes the HITS Act a fiscally responsible investment in the American creative economy.
The HITS Act also brings much-needed parity to the tax code for all creative industries. Currently, under Sec. 181 of the Internal Revenue Code, qualified film, television, and live theatrical productions may elect to fully deduct new production costs in the year they are incurred. Music production, which occurs in every state and congressional district, deserves the same treatment. Instead of being able to fully deduct production expenses in the year they occur, independent music makers must currently amortize production expenses for tax purposes over the full economic life of their creation. For small creators and the small businesses that invest in their careers, this timing difference slows down their reinvestment in new projects that can fuel growth. The HITS Act harmonizes the tax code and ensures that all the major creative industries are treated similarly.
As you consider how to best craft comprehensive tax legislation this year, the music community strongly urges you to include the HITS Act in any vehicle. It represents exactly the type of bipartisan, bicameral, and non-controversial economic investment that Congress should be proud to support. Passage of H.R. 1259 is a smart and simple step that will make a lasting difference for countless independent music creators and music small businesses.
Thank you for your consideration.
Signed,
Dr. Richard James BurgessPresident and CEOAmerican Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
Todd DuplerChief Advocacy and Public Policy OfficerRecording Academy
As of Thursday (July 27), the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has officially transferred the AM For Every Vehicle Act to the Senate floor. The bill is eligible for a full Senate vote, though no date has yet been set. The AM For Every Vehicle Act would mandate that AM radios be […]
LONDON — When the European Union announced plans to regulate artificial intelligence in 2021, legislators started focusing on “high risk” systems that could threaten human rights, such as biometric surveillance and predictive policing. Amid increasing concern among artists and rights holders about the potential impact of AI on the creative sector, however, EU legislators are also now looking at the intersection of this new technology and copyright.
The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which is now being negotiated among politicians in different branches of government, is the first comprehensive legislation in the world to regulate AI. In addition to banning “intrusive and discriminatory uses” of the technology, the current version of the legislation addresses generative AI, mandating that companies disclose content that is created by AI to differentiate it from works authored by humans. Other provisions in the law would require companies that use generative AI to provide details of copyrighted works, including music, on which they trained their systems. (The AI Act is a regulation, so it would pass directly into law in all 27 member states.)
Music executives began paying closer attention to the legislation after the November launch of ChatGPT. In April, around the time that “Heart on My Sleeve,” a track that featured AI-powered imitations of vocals by Drake and The Weeknd, drove home the issue posed by AI, industry lobbyists convinced lawmakers to add the transparency provisions.
So far, big technology companies, including Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft, have publicly stated that they, too, support AI regulation, at least in the abstract. Behind the scenes, however, multiple music executives tell Billboard that technology lobbyists are trying to weaken these transparency provisions by arguing that such obligations could put European AI developers at a competitive disadvantage.
“They want codes of conduct” — as opposed to laws — “and very low forms of regulation,” says John Phelan, director general of international music publishing trade association ICMP.
Another argument is that summarizing training data “would basically come down to providing a summary of half, or even the entire, internet,” says Boniface de Champris, Brussels-based policy manager at the Computer and Communications Industry Association Europe, which counts Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Meta among its members. “Europe’s existing copyright rules already cover AI applications sufficiently.”
In May, Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, emerged as the highest-profile critic of the EU’s proposals, accusing it of “overregulating” the nascent business. He even said that his company, which is backed by Microsoft, might consider leaving Europe if it could not comply with the legislation, although he walked back this statement a few days later. OpenAI and other companies lobbied — successfully — to have an early draft of the legislation changed so that “general-purpose AI systems” like ChatGPT would no longer be considered high risk and thus subject to stricter rules, according to documents Time magazine obtained from the European Commission. (OpenAI didn’t respond to Billboard’s requests for comment.)
The lobbying over AI echoes some of the other political conflicts between media and technology companies — especially the one over the EU Copyright Directive, which passed in 2019. While that “was framed as YouTube versus the music industry, the narrative has now switched to AI,” says Sophie Goossens, a partner at global law firm Reed Smith. “But the argument from rights holders is much the same: They want to stop tech companies from making a living on the backs of their content.”
Several of the provisions in the Copyright Directive deal with AI, including an exception in the law for text- and data-mining of copyrighted content, such as music, in certain cases. Another exception allows scientific and research institutions to engage in text- and data-mining on works to which they have lawful access.
So far, the debate around generative AI in the United States has focused on whether performers can use state laws on right of publicity to protect their distinctive voices and images — the so-called “output side” of generative AI. In contrast, both the Copyright Directive and the AI Act address the “input side,” meaning ways that rights holders can either stop AI systems from using their content for training purposes or limit which ones can in order to license that right.
Another source of tension created by the Copyright Directive is the potential for blurred boundaries between research institutions and commercial businesses. Microsoft, for example, refers to its Muzic venture as “a research project on AI music,” while Google regularly partners with independent research, academic and scientific bodies on technology developments, including AI. To close potential loopholes, Phelan wants lawmakers to strengthen the bill’s transparency provisions, requiring specific details of all music accessed for training, instead of the “summary” that’s currently called for. IFPI, the global recorded-music trade organization, regards the transparency provisions as “a meaningful step in the right direction,” according to Lodovico Benvenuti, managing director of its European office, and he says he hopes lawmakers won’t water that down.
The effects of the AI Act will be felt far outside Europe, partly because they will apply to any company that does business in the 27-country bloc and partly because it will be the first comprehensive set of rules on the use of the technology. In the United States, the Biden administration has met with technology executives to discuss AI but has yet to lay out a legislation strategy. On June 22, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he was working on “exceedingly ambitious” bipartisan legislation on the topic, but political divides in the United States as the next presidential election approaches would make passage difficult. China unveiled its own draft laws in April, although other governments may be reluctant to look at legislation there as a model.
“The rest of the world is looking at the EU because they are leading the way in terms of how to regulate AI,” says Goossens. “This will be a benchmark.”
In 1994, at the dawn of the internet era, Rolling Stone asked Steve Jobs if he still had faith in technology. “It’s not a faith in technology,” he responded. “It’s faith in people.”
Today, at the dawn of the artificial intelligence era, we put our faith in people too.
It’s hard to think of an issue that has exploded onto the public scene with the furor of the debate over AI, which went from obscure technology journals to national morning shows practically overnight. This week, Congress is convening the first two of what will surely be many hearings on the issue, including one with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and another with musician, voice actor and SAG-AFTRA National Board member Dan Navarro.
As members of the global Human Artistry Campaign, made up of more than 100 organizations that represent a united, worldwide coalition of the creative arts, we welcome this open and active debate. It’s gratifying to see policymakers, industry, and our own creative community asking tough questions up front. It’s a lot easier to chart a course in advance than to play catch up from afterward.
We don’t have long to get this right, either. The internet is already awash in unlicensed and unethical “style” and “soundalike” tools that rip off the writing, voice, likeness and style of professional artists and songwriters without authorization or permission. Powerful new engines like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Jukebox, Google’s MusicLM and Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing have been trained on vast troves of musical compositions, lyrics, and sound recordings — as well as every other type of data and information available on the internet — without even the most basic transparency or disclosure, let alone consent from the creators whose work is being used. Songwriters, recording artists, and musicians today are literally being forced to compete against AI programs trained on copies of their own compositions and recordings.
RIAA Chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier
Othello Banaci
We strongly support AI that can be used to enhance art and stretch the potential of human creativity even further. Technology has always pushed art forward, and AI will be no different.
At the same time, however, human artistry must and will always remain at the core of genuine creation. The basis of creative expression is the sharing of lived experiences — an artist-to-audience/audience-to-artist connection that forms our culture and identity.
Without a rich supply of human-created works, there would be nothing on which to train AI in the first place. And if we don’t lay down a policy foundation now that respects, values and compensates the unique genius of human creators, we will end up in a cultural cul-de-sac, feeding AI-generated works back into the engines that produced them in a costly and ultimately empty race to the artistic bottom.
That policy foundation must start with the core value of consent. Use of copyrighted works to train or develop AI must be subject to free-market licensing and authorization from all rights holders. Creators and copyright owners must retain exclusive control over the ways their work is used. The moral invasion of AI engines that steal the core of a professional performer’s identity — the product of a lifetime’s hard work and dedication — without permission or pay cannot be tolerated.
David Israelite
Courtesy of NMPA
This will require AI developers to ensure copyrighted training inputs are approved and licensed, including those used by pre-trained AIs they employ. It means they need to keep thorough and transparent records of the creative works and likenesses used to train AI systems and how they were exploited. These obligations are nothing new, though — anyone who uses another creator’s work or a professional’s voice, image or likeness must already ensure they have the necessary rights and maintain the records to prove it.
Congress is right to bring in AI developers like Sam Altman to hear the technology community’s vision for the future of AI and explore the safeguards and guardrails the industry is relying on today. The issues around the rapid deployment of novel AI capabilities are numerous and profound: data privacy, deepfakes, bias and misinformation in training sets, job displacement and national security.
Creators will be watching and listening closely for concrete, meaningful commitments to the core principles of permission and fair market licensing that are necessary to sustain songwriters and recording artists and drive innovation.
We have already seen some of what AI can do. Now it falls to us to insist that it be done in ethical and lawful ways. Nothing short of our culture — and, over time, our very humanity — is at stake.
David Israelite is the President & CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association. NMPA is the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners.
Mitch Glazier is chairman/CEO of the RIAA, the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the major recorded-music companies.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal’s new legislation aims to take on Ticketmaster by clamping down on the use of long-term contracts to lock up the exclusive ticketing rights of U.S. venues and festivals. But it could backfire in a way that would negatively affect venues and fans.
Titled the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act, the legislation — introduced on the same day as a second bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would ban hidden ticket fees — is a clear attempt to break Ticketmaster’s grip on the ticketing industry, although it never actually mentions the Live Nation-owned company by name. (A press release announcing the Unlocking Ticket Markets Act says today’s concert marketplace is dominated “by one company” with a “70-80 percent market share” thanks in part to the long-term contracts its clients sign for its services.) But while Klobuchar and Blumental believe shortening ticketing contracts will promote competition, the proposal doesn’t seem to consider the benefits these contracts offer the venue clients.
Ever since Ticketmaster dethroned Ticketron as the top ticket seller in the 1980s, the company has built its dominance by offering large upfront cash payments in exchange for exclusive deals. This practice has become commonplace from ticketing companies in live entertainment, and venues and sports teams have come to rely on these advances — which can equal hundreds of thousands of dollars for smaller venues and millions of dollars for arenas and stadiums, increasing in value based on the length of the term — that are paid off over the term of the deal through fees added to the face value of each ticket.
This is a bargaining tool the ticketing companies use to acquire more venue customers, but within that, it’s at the venues’ discretion what kind of deal to take, passing the cost of that loan onto their customers as ticketing fees. If venues haven’t repaid the advance at the end of the contract term, they typically have two options: cut a check to the ticketing company to cover the difference or re-up their deal and borrow more money.
Klobuchar and Blumenthal’s bill would essentially shorten the length of the exclusive ticketing contracts by ordering the Federal Trade Commission to “prevent the use of excessively long multi-year exclusive contracts,” according to a press release announcing the proposed legislation. (The text of the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act is not public, so it’s not clear how “excessively long” is defined, though average ticketing contracts are about five to six years.) If the FTC opted to limit ticketing to half of the average terms, Ticketmaster’s competitors would have twice as many opportunities to bid for those contracts the company holds.
Shorter contracts would either mean less money for venues, or greater risk that they would fail to repay the advances — in which case venues would either need to repay the remaining balance or negotiate that debt into a contract renewal. For example, a temporary four-month downturn in business is going to have a greater impact on a two-year, $2 million loan than it would on a four-year, $4 million loan. To protect themselves, ticketing companies would likely increase the fees added to tickets to recoup faster, thereby reducing the heightened risk of default — likely meaning higher costs to consumers.
A bill focused on contract length also fails to address long-standing complaints that venues often work with Ticketmaster because of a perception that it means parent company Live Nation will bring more events to their building. This sort of business practice is prohibited under the consent decree that has governed Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s operations since merging in 2010, but that hasn’t stopped accusations of anticompetitive behavior. While Live Nation has long denied this charge, during a January Senate Judiciary hearing probing Ticketmaster’s botched sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Sens. Klobuchar and Blumenthal indicated they believed that Ticketmaster’s relationship with Live Nation was the main reason Ticketmaster held a such a large market share of the ticketing business. Term lengths of the company’s contracts, however, were rarely mentioned.
In response to the introduction of the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act, a Ticketmaster spokesperson told Billboard, “The ticketing industry is more competitive than ever. Ticketmaster wins business because it offers the best product available for venues, and the length of contracts is generally decided by venues and the guaranteed payments they want to help support their expenses. We do not expect any of the proposed changes to have a material impact on our business as we historically add clients in competitive marketplaces.”
Changing the terms of those loans, as Klobuchar and Blumenthal seek to do by limiting exclusive ticketing deals, could either cause venues to earn less money on the ticketing deals or increase the fees they charge consumers to repay those loans — making ticket prices even more expensive in a climate where most Americans already feel they’re paying too much.
Representatives from the Black Music Coalition (BMAC), the Recording Academy and SAG-AFTRA came together with Congressmen Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on Capitol Hill Thursday (April 27) to reintroduce the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act, a bill that would limit the use of song lyrics in court — a practice that disproportionately affects Black artists working in rap and hip-hop.
“Since the 1990s, there are hundreds literally hundreds of documented cases where prosecutors use lyrics as criminal evidence in court and this practice disproportionately affects rap artists,” said Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. during a press conference announcing the bill’s reintroduction. “But this act is absolutely not just about hip-hop artists. Silencing creative expression is a violation against all artists and all forms of creative expression. The Restoring Artistic Protection Act affirms that every single artist, no matter the discipline, should be able to express themselves without fear of prosecution.”
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher, who was also in attendance, advocated for the First Amendment rights of musicians. “Rap music actually is folk music, because folk music is the voice of the people,” she said. “I urge Congress to pass the RAP act to ensure fair and equitable treatment in the justice system.”
First introduced in July 2022, if passed, the RAP Act would be the first federal law to limit the use of lyrics in criminal cases.
Also participating in the press conference was 300 Elektra Entertainment CEO Kevin Liles, who urged bipartisan support for the bill: “For the first time in a long time, I have hope…in groups on the right and the left both saying that this is against the values of Americans.”
The revived interest in the issue of rap lyrics being used in court came about due to the May 2022 indictment against rappers Young Thug and Gunna along with dozens of others on RICO charges, with prosecutors claiming their group YSL was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta street gang called “Young Slime Life.” The 88-page indictment cited lyrics and music videos as evidence, including quotes from Young Thug songs including, “I never killed anybody but got something to do with that body” and “I killed his man in front of his momma.”
Though Young Thug remains in custody ahead of trial, Gunna was released in December after pleading guilty to a gang-related charge.
On the state level, a similar bill in California known as the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September. In New York, another bill known as “Rap Music on Trial” passed the state’s Senate in May but failed to secure a vote in the New York Assembly before the end of last year’s legislative session. Comparable bills are making their way through the sate legislatures in both Louisiana and Missouri.
“As a music creator myself, I know how important it is that we safeguard artists’ freedom to create at all costs, and to work to eradicate the biases that come with the unconstitutional practice of using lyrics as evidence, which disproportionately affects artists of color, and penalizes the creativity of Black and brown fields,” added songwriter-producer-artist Rico Love, who serves as chair of the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective.
Love added, “Music makers are storytellers who have provided important insight into our country throughout history. We have the responsibility to protect them and their works of creative expression, which helped define American culture.”
The announcement of the RAP Act’s reintroduction followed the Recording Academy’s annual GRAMMYs on the Hill, a two-day event that honored Pharrell Williams, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Bill Cassidy and connected music creators with members of Congress to advocate for the RAP Act, the HITS Act, the American Music Fairness Act and reform in the live event ticketing space.
Two new bills introduced to the Senate Wednesday aim to clean up the ticketing industry and address long-standing criticisms about Ticketmaster’s dominance over the primary ticketing market.
The TICKET ACT, introduced by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — chair and ranking member of Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, respectively — would ban hidden ticket fees, requiring vendors to display the total price of a ticket up front. These fees can sometimes increase the purchase price by as much as 60% or higher. For example, some tickets in the upper seating section for Luke Combs‘ current stadium tour being sold by Ticketmaster are marked up more than 100% when fees and taxes are added to the face value.
The bill would also attempt to reign in speculative ticket sales, a heavily criticized sales technique used by ticket scalpers to maximize profits. Speculative ticket selling is the practice of selling a ticket one does not own, often at the height of the market, and then waiting until the price drops to procure and deliver the ticket to the consumer. The TICKET ACT would require scalpers to display in a “clear and conspicuous manner” that the ticket seller does not actually possess the ticket at the time the ticket is listed for sale.
Recent ticketing legislation proposals by both Live Nation and the National Independent Talent Organization have called for a ban of speculative ticketing – with several prominent music industry executives comparing the practice to fraud.
The other bill, the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act, was presented by longtime Ticketmaster critics Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), seeking to limit the use and scope of exclusive multi-year ticketing contracts in live entertainment. The legislation is aimed at Ticketmaster, which “by some estimates has locked up 70 to 80 percent market share and has used its dominance to pressure venues to agree to ticketing contracts that last up to ten years, insulating it from competition,” explains a press release from Klobuchar’s office announcing the legislation.
It follows a January Senate Judiciary Committee hearing probing the cause of the Ticketmaster Taylor Swift crash. During the hearing, Ticketmaster was regular criticized by the committee for the company’s dominate market share of the U.S. ticketing industry, with several senators accusing the company of acting like a monopoly.
The Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act would empower “the Federal Trade Commission to prevent the use of excessively long multi-year exclusive contracts that lock out competitors, decrease incentives to innovate new services, and increase costs for fans.”
The text of the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Acts has not yet been released to the public and it’s unclear how the bill would define excessively long contracts. In a press release announcing the legislation, Klobuchar’s office noted that some exclusive ticketing contracts last as long as ten years, but the average contract term in sports and live entertainment is typically five to seven years, according to multiple sources, including the often-cited Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com lawsuit from 2003.
Spotify founder/CEO Daniel Ek is meeting with members of the United States Congress and the Biden administration this week in Washington, D.C., to urge them to pass legislation that would rein in the “stranglehold” companies like Apple have over the competition on their app stores. The executive revealed in a Wednesday (April 19) post on Spotify’s For the Record blog after teasing in a tweet on Sunday that he was headed to the U.S. capital.
The Open App Markets Act — which was introduced in August 2021 and which Ek has previously lobbied for — would bar Apple, Google and other app stores with more than 50 million users from forcing app developers to use their payment systems as a condition of distribution. It would also block app store owners from punishing app developers if they extend deals to customers or offer their app for lower prices elsewhere.
While the bill was advanced by a Senate committee last year, no further action was taken. With this trip, Ek is looking to train a renewed spotlight on the bill, which he hopes will be resurrected for a wider vote by the new Congress.
Apple has lobbied against the bill, arguing that it could lead to consumers loading apps onto their smartphones from places outside of its centralized app store, introducing potential privacy risks.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Ek has argued that Apple and others act as anti-competitive gatekeepers because the terms required for inclusion in their app stores prevent Spotify and others from telling consumers about new products or deal offers.
“Apple prohibits competition by not allowing developers to discuss new products, features, and deals with their own users,” Ek wrote in an editorial posted to Spotify’s blog on Wednesday (April 19). “For instance, Apple promotes deals for Apple Music to Spotify customers, but denies us the same privilege.”
Read Ek’s full editorial on Spotify’s For The Record blog here.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) responded to President Joe Biden’s calls for fairness and transparency in ticketing fees by introducing the Junk Fee Prevention Act on Wednesday (March 22). While the proposed legislation goes beyond live music, it would transform how concert tickets are sold and attempts to reduce fees that inflate tickets’ face values.
“Concealed surprise fees — nickel and diming Americans to distraction — must be stopped,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
“Consumers are charged hidden fees when purchasing everything from flights to concert tickets,” added Whitehouse. “Our Junk Fee Prevention Act would provide consumers with the transparency they deserve when making a purchase.”
Biden urged Congress to pass legislation addressing “junk fees” during his Feb. 7 State of the Union address, pledging to cap fees on concert tickets and make companies disclose all-in prices upfront. “Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” he said. “Pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act so companies stop ripping us off.”
Blumenthal and Whitehouse’s proposed legislation would at least improve transparency. Ticketing companies would be required to “clearly and conspicuously” display the total price of a ticket with all fees included “in each advertisement and when a price is first shown to a consumer.”
While the legislation targets concert ticket fees and some re-sale tactics, it’s more than a reaction to Taylor Swift’s botched Eras Tour presale that prompted a Senate hearing on Ticketmaster’s business practices. The Junk Fee Prevention Act seeks to prevent companies from applying or advertising “any mandatory fees that are excessive or deceptive” for any good or service. It also targets fees for airline tickets and short-term housing such as hotels and vacation rentals, and would require airlines to seat parents next to their young children.
Transparency is a key theme of the Junk Fee Prevention Act. It includes a requirement to disclose the total number of tickets being offered for a concert, theater event, sporting event or other events “at a place of public amusement of any kind.” Both lawmakers and consumers have long complained that many concert tickets are held back for fan clubs, commercial partners like credit card companies and VIP packages.
Many of the changes sought in the Junk Fee Prevention Act are also found in the FAIR Ticketing Reforms, a set of “common sense” measures introduced on March 8 by a group of leading music companies including Live Nation, Universal Music Group and Red Light Management. FAIR Ticketing Reforms also calls for an end to speculative selling on secondary markets and mandatory all-in pricing. Unlike the Junk Fee Prevention Act, FAIR Ticketing Reforms also calls for stricter measures against automated bots and policing and fining resale sites that serve as a safe haven for scalpers.
Any person who violates the Junk Fee Prevention Act would be subject to the penalties of the Federal Trade Commission Act. A state attorney general can also bring a civil action if a violation affects residents of that state. In determining whether a fee is excessive, the bill asks the Federal Trade Commission or court to consider whether the fee is “reasonable and proportional” to the cost of a ticket and the reason for the fee. The FTC or court can also consider “any other factors determined appropriate.”
A mandatory fee is defined as any fee required to purchase a ticket, is not “reasonably avoidable,” is not expected to be included by a “reasonable consumer” or “any other fee or surcharge determined appropriate” by the FTC. Within 180 days of the bill’s enactment, the FTC would commence a rule making proceeding to consider whether and how the Federal Communications Commission should require disclosure of mandatory fees or prohibit companies from charging mandatory fees.
