Radio stations face new music royalty fees under copyright expansion bill
S. 326 — American Music Fairness Act · Filed by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) · 5 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 30, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill extends federal copyright protections for sound recordings to terrestrial radio broadcasts for the first time, requiring radio stations to pay royalties to record labels and artists when they play music. It creates a tiered fee structure ($10–$500 annually) for small broadcasters based on revenue, and mandates that royalty rates be set by Copyright Royalty Judges starting in 2025, with proceedings repeated every five years. The bill explicitly protects songwriters' existing royalties and directs judges to consider radio's promotional value when setting rates.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is extending sound-recording copyright protections to a previously exempt medium (terrestrial radio), a significant copyright expansion. However, it simultaneously creates statutory fee caps and exemptions for small and public broadcasters, making it a hybrid of expansion and regulatory relief rather than pure deregulation or pure enforcement.
What the text implies
- The bill's promotional-value language (§7) may create litigation risk: radio stations could argue that airplay constitutes sufficient 'promotion' to justify lower rates, leading to prolonged Copyright Royalty Judge proceedings and rate-setting uncertainty.
- Small-broadcaster fee caps ($10–$500/year) are far below market rates for digital services; this creates a two-tier system where terrestrial radio pays a fraction of what streaming services pay, potentially incentivizing format shifts and reducing terrestrial radio's competitive position.
- Public broadcasters (NPR, PBS stations) face a $100/year cap regardless of listener base, which may not scale with actual use; this could create perverse incentives for public media to increase music use without proportional cost.
- The bill does not address how royalties will be distributed among featured artists, session musicians, and labels—leaving that to Copyright Royalty Judges and potentially creating disputes over artist compensation.
- Timing provision (§3) delays first royalty payments until after rate-setting concludes, creating a multi-year grace period for radio stations before compliance costs begin, which may reduce urgency for legislative or industry negotiation.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Radio listeners and music consumers benefit from artists receiving direct compensation for broadcast use, potentially supporting more music creation and artist income. However, radio stations—especially small and public broadcasters—face new mandatory fees that may increase operational costs, potentially leading to reduced local programming, fewer stations, or higher advertising costs passed to listeners. The promotional value carve-out and small-broadcaster fee caps mitigate but do not eliminat
Who stands to gain
- sound recording copyright owners (major record labels)
- featured and nonfeatured recording artists
- independent record labels
Named in the bill
Copyright Royalty Judges, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), terrestrial radio broadcasters, sound recording copyright owners, public broadcasting entities, nonprofit collective (designated to distribute royalties)
Where it stands
5 cosponsors: 3 Democrats, 2 Republicans.
- Jan 30, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jan 30, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
16 lobbying clients named this bill on 25 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $11,283,735 in lobbying spend. A filing names 8 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 95% of bills with at least one filing.
Marsha Blackburn, the sponsor, reported $133,620 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Association of Broadcasters — $5,600,000 on 2 filings
- Universal Music Group — $1,460,000 on 2 filings
- Consumer Technology Association — $1,080,000 on 1 filing
- Iheartmedia Inc — $1,037,957 on 1 filing
- AFL-CIO — $760,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 21, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (9,159 characters) on Aug 24, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 21, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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