A bill before the U.S. House of Representatives is about to be introduced to Congress this week, which would give producers, engineers, and mixers some of the digital royalties earned by artists. The act is called The Allocation For Music Producer Act (AMP Act – H.R. 1457) and is being introduced by representatives Joe Crowley (D-New York) and Tom Rooney (R-Florida).
According to Music Times, this bill would provide a statutory right for producers, engineers, and mixers to receive a fixed amount of royalties. It'll also retroactively change a few things for older music.
This new framework will also give studio warriors the ability to negotiate with artists on works older than 1995, when the 45 percent digital royalty rate for artists was established. If the request was for more than four months, a collective will weigh in on the request and, if approved, give 2 percent of the 45 percent to the mixer, engineer or producer. The 2 percent would be split evenly if there are multiple requesters.
So we'll see! Digital revenue has been an incredibly hot topic over the past few years, so it was essentially only a matter of time before this came up.
