The Music Modernization Act is now Law

For those that have followed Thrive Indie from the beginning, you know that we have been covering the Music Modernization Act for well over a year.

Well, guess what.

On Thursday, October 11, 2018, President Trump signed into law the Music Modernization Act. The largest reform to copyright law in decades. Officially called the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act of 2018, the law ensures that artists are compensated fairly in the digital age.

The bill received unanimous support from both parties on its way to law. Though not without bumps. Most of which coming from entities inside the music industry.

What does Music Modernization Act do

The MMA accomplishes three main objectives.

• The Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act for pre-1972 recordings.

Artists and songwriters will now be able to collect royalties for songs recorded before 1972. Pretty straightforward.

• The Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act

This act sets up legal procedure for producers and engineers to be able to collect their royalties directly from SoundExchange. Before producers had to rely on the artist to pay what them what they were owed. As a side note, this is the first time producers have been mentioned in copyright law.

• The Music Modernization Act

This is the biggie. This act creates a new governing agency that will be tasked with issuing blanket licenses to digital services and collecting and distributing royalties to rights holders. Before streaming companies would be tasked with tracking down right holders which proved to be problematic. These digital services will be paying for this new un-named entity for taking the task off their hands.

This is the part that has songwriters most excited for the bill. Getting paid on time became a serious problem for songwriters in the digital age.

A New Music Industry  

The passage of this bill cements a new chapter in the music industry. The streaming era shook things up dramatically and there is a lot left to be accomplished. Nevertheless, this is still a huge victory for songwriters.