Music’s Big Week in Congress: Three Bills Pass the House

It was a big week for music legislation on Capitol Hill.

The House of Representatives passed both the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act (H.R. 979) and the American Music Tourism Act (H.R.1768) within 20 minutes of each other the 15th, and then advanced the MAIN Event Ticketing Act (H.R.2713) out of the Committee on Energy and Commerce the next day.

These bills cover a wide range of issues facing the music industry and use different mechanisms to address them; while the radio and ticketing acts impose new rules on the private sector, backed by enforcement and penalties, the tourism act offers new support to the industry from the federal government.

First up in the quick succession of actions was the American Music Tourism Act.

Passed by the House the night of the 15th, the bill now heads to President Trump’s desk for signature. The Act directs the Commerce Department to broadly promote international travel to music events in the US. It would function as an economic development bill, requiring the government to facilitate music tourism and report on the results of its efforts after a year of work.

Shortly after, the House overwhelmingly passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, with 317 cosponsors and a nearly even bipartisan split.

The law would require cars both manufactured and imported into the US to have AM radio installed, effective from one year after the law passes. It has now been placed on the Senate legislative calendar for a vote, where it already has 60 cosponsors.

House Speaker Mike Johnson stated, “[T]he House took a major step toward keeping AM radio in every new vehicle, ensuring our constituents never lose access to essential emergency warnings as well as some of their favorite broadcasting.”

The House rounded it out the next day by advancing The MAIN Event Ticketing Act out of committee.

This anti-bot legislation would strengthen the existing Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016 (15 U.S.C. 45c) by introducing new requirements for online ticket sellers to enforce their ticket purchase limits with a technological security measure. Ticketing platforms would have to report when their systems have been circumvented and would be liable for civil penalties of at least $10,000 per day of violation. Its companion Senate bill S.196 passed the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation last September and has been waiting for a vote since.

The three bills give interesting insight into Congress’ regulatory approach to disparate issues facing the music industry.

On one end of the private sector, the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is an instance of regulators stepping in against the direction of the automobile industry’s technological development in order to preserve the aging radio market. On the other, the MAIN Event Ticketing Act attempts to update federal law to keep up with the rapid development of technology by strengthening the outdated, decade-old anti-bot law.

Then, on the public front, the American Music Tourism Act seeks to promote the music economy by directing federal resources toward attracting more international spending in the US, which is already the world’s largest recorded music market.

What other music legislation is up for Congress to consider?

The Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act (H.R.1402), which would institute a suite of consumer-friendly ticket pricing reforms, passed the House last April and has been awaiting a Senate vote since September. In the meantime, state legislatures have been pushing ahead with their own ticketing transparency laws and speculative ticketing bans to get ahead of the federal government.

Also stalled in Congress are the Restoring Artistic Protection Act (RAP Act) and the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA), which have both been introduced and failed to progress multiple times. These bills would restrict prosecutors from using a defendant’s musical work against them in criminal cases, and require terrestrial radio to pay public performance royalties to sound recording copyright holders, respectively.