LEE GREENWOOD: Trump can help finish the fight Frank Sinatra started

This year, successful communities each crossed America, bands volition onslaught up "God Bless the U.S.A." and crowds volition emergence to their feet. It volition hap astatine firework shows and small-town parades, astatine ballgames and backyard cookouts, arsenic our state marks 250 years.

I wrote that opus much than 40 years agone connected a circuit bus, betwixt shows, moving 300 dates a year. Since then, I've performed it successful each authorities of our national and each crossed the globe for our troops who are serving a agelong mode from home. I person ne'er erstwhile gotten bushed of it.

But present is thing astir radical bash not know. Every clip an AM/FM vigor presumption plays that recording, the presumption makes money, but the artists and musicians who recorded it marque nothing. Not maine oregon the different musicians who performed it with me. A vigor institution tin broadcast "God Bless the U.S.A." a 1000 times, merchantability advertizing against each play, and ne'er wage the radical who made it. That is not due to the fact that of immoderate woody we signed away. It's due to the fact that of a loophole successful the instrumentality that Congress has near unfastened for astir a 100 years.

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I emotion radio. Radio has been portion of my beingness and my vocation for arsenic agelong arsenic I tin remember. This is not astir punishing section stations oregon silencing the voices that link communities. It is astir asking the biggest broadcast companies successful America to travel the aforesaid basal rule each different level already follows: erstwhile you usage euphony to marque money, the radical who made that euphony merit to stock successful it.

This is simply a basal American idea: erstwhile someone's enactment creates value, they should beryllium paid reasonably for it.

When a husbandman grows a crop, it's his to sell. When a mill turns retired a product, the radical who built it get paid. A signaling should beryllium nary different.

The men and women who marque a signaling make existent worth successful that recording. But AM/FM vigor has had a escaped walk since the aboriginal days of broadcasting, and the biggest broadcasting corporations successful the state inactive thin connected it today, drafting immense audiences disconnected different people's work, pulling successful billions successful advertising, and leaving performers precocious and dry.

That's not a escaped market. It's a authorities favour handed to 1 manufacture and paid for by moving musicians, kept live each these years due to the fact that the vigor industry’s lobbyists walk millions to guarantee Congress doesn’t hole it.

This is not astir my royalty check. I americium blessed. I'm grateful for the vocation I’ve had. This is truly astir league players, workplace musicians, and backup singers, radical whose names ne'er marque the marquee. They travel in, bash beauteous work, and spell location to their families, and they person ne'er seen a dime from AM/FM vigor for immoderate of it. They're moving people, and they ought to beryllium paid for the enactment they do.

The vigor companies assertion they’re giving america escaped advertising. A rotation connected the dial sells records and performance tickets, they say, truthful we ought to telephone it square. Even if that were true, it would not springiness vigor a close to usage our recordings without compensation. And present is what vigor leaves out: each different spot that puts my recordings successful beforehand of a listener pays for that right. Spotify. SiriusXM. YouTube. Internet radio. Only old-fashioned AM/FM takes our euphony and plays it for free.

This loophole costs america beyond our borders, too. Because America doesn't wage performers for vigor plays (a information we clasp successful communal with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea) different countries clasp backmost royalties our artists person already earned, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. And due to the fact that America doesn’t wage artists, the European Union is present moving to withhold different $287 cardinal annually from our ain artists.

There’s a measure successful Congress that volition hole each that. The American Music Fairness Act is simply a bipartisan connection that requires large vigor corporations to yet play by the rules. It’s a narrowly-tailored bill, led by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), that allows independent, section broadcasters to play unlimited euphony for a fewer dollars each time portion the biggest, astir almighty vigor corporations yet wage what they owe.

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If the American Music Fairness Act becomes law, not lone volition American broadcasters yet commencement paying artists, but countries astir the satellite that person withheld royalties due to the fact that of this loophole volition yet commencement paying artists arsenic well. The EU’s connection to withhold adjacent much wealth volition beryllium dormant connected arrival.

This is not a caller fight. Forty years ago, Frank Sinatra rallied artists to inquire Congress to adjacent the vigor loophole, but Congress didn’t listen. I’m intent connected finishing the enactment that Ol’ Blue Eyes started. And I’m grateful that close present we person a President who knows however to get the occupation done.

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In his archetypal term, President Trump signed the Music Modernization Act, which yet got artists paid reasonably successful the streaming age. The American Music Fairness Act is the portion that instrumentality near unfinished, and I cognize that President Trump tin beryllium the 1 to yet get this measure crossed the decorativeness enactment aft different presidents person failed.

America has ever made a plain committedness that hard enactment deserves to beryllium rewarded. That committedness is simply a bully portion of what we'll beryllium celebrating this twelvemonth arsenic our state turns 250. Closing a hundred-year-old loophole that's near artists unpaid would beryllium a fitting mode to grant it, and to yet fto the radical who recorded America’s soundtrack stock successful what their enactment is worth.