H.R. 5664: Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2025

This bill, titled the Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2025, aims to establish a fund known as the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund designed to ensure musical artists receive fair compensation for their work. Here’s an overview of the main components of the bill:

Establishment of the Fund

The bill mandates the Register of Copyrights to designate an eligible entity to create and manage the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund. This entity must be a non-profit organization set up specifically for this purpose, governed by a board that includes artist representatives.

Funding the Fund

Monetary contributions to this Fund will come from:

• Service Providers: Companies offering music streaming services must deposit a living wage royalty fee collected from their subscribers. This fee is additional to the regular subscription costs and is set at 50% of the subscription price, with a minimum and maximum threshold.
• Other Sources: The Fund can also receive donations or grants from government entities or other sources.

Payments from the Fund

The Fund is intended to distribute payments to musical artists as follows:

• 90% of distributed funds will go to eligible featured artists, those who are prominently featured on recordings.
• 10% will go to eligible non-featured artists, such as session musicians or background vocalists.

These payments will be based on the artists' share of qualifying streams each quarter, ensuring that compensation reflects actual use of their work.

Service Provider Responsibilities

Service providers will have specific duties, including:

• Charging the additional living wage royalty fee to subscribers.
• Providing clear statements outlining this fee in their billing communication.
• Keeping detailed records of their revenue associated with the living wage fees and other revenue sources for regulatory oversight.

Compliance and Enforcement

The bill allows the Fund Administrator to establish regulations and penalties for service providers that violate the guidelines set forth in the Act, ensuring accountability in the fund's management and distribution process.

Definitions

Key terms are defined in the bill, including:

• Artist: A human creator, excluding corporations and AI.
• Featured Artist: An artist prominently featured in a song, while Non-Featured Artists include session and background musicians.
• Qualifying Stream: Refers to streams of a master recording, capped at 1,000,000 streams for payout calculations.

Relevant Companies

• AMZN - Amazon (Amazon Music could be affected by the required additional charges to subscribers and the associated fees that may diminish overall revenue).
• APPN - AppLovin Corporation (If involved in advertising revenue from music streaming, it may adjust its business models to align with new requirements).
• META - Meta Platforms (As a platform might be implicated in streaming music content or advertising linked to streaming services).
• SQ - Block, Inc. (As a payment processing company, it may need to adapt to the new fees and payments structure).