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

This section establishes the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund, to be administered by an eligible entity designated by the Register of Copyrights (with Librarian of Congress approval) and noticed in the Federal Register within 30 days of designation. Service providers must deposit into the fund, on a quarterly basis beginning after the administrator's designation, (1) all living wage royalty fees collected in the prior quarter and (2) 10% of non-subscription revenue received in the prior quarter; the administrator may also accept deposits from other sources (e.g., governments), with all fund amounts available under section 3.

This section establishes procedures for allocating and distributing payments from the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund to eligible featured and non-featured musical artists. Specifically, it (1) allocates 90% of amounts to featured artists and 10% to non-featured artists; (2) directs the Fund Administrator to make quarterly payments—beginning in the calendar quarter funds are first deposited—consisting of pro-rata shares to featured artists based on their qualifying streams from the prior quarter and the non-featured artists' share to the American Federation of Musicians and Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund (or successor) for further distribution; (3) requires unclaimed featured artist payments to be held in a segregated trust account and returned to the Fund after a reasonable period if the artist remains unidentified; and (4) requires the Fund Administrator to retain related books and records for at least three calendar years.

This section requires service providers to charge subscribers a living wage royalty fee equal to 50% of the subscription fee (not less than $4 or more than $10), beginning on a date set by the Fund Administrator; include the fee as a line item on statements or receipts; exclude the fee from calculations of content costs or revenue; and maintain books and records for at least three years relating to these activities. The section further authorizes the Fund Administrator to require service providers, by regulation, to report (1) non-subscription revenue, (2) subscription revenue, (3) living wage royalty fee collections, and (4) artist stream data, and to audit service provider records.

This section authorizes the Fund Administrator to establish, by regulation, penalties for (1) a service provider's violation of a prohibition under the Act or (2) a service provider's failure to comply with a requirement under the Act.

This section defines 18 terms used in the Act, including (1) "artist" as a human creator excluding corporate entities and fully generative artificial intelligence; (2) "eligible entity" as a specified non-profit governed by a board with artist representatives to administer the Fund (or a close substitute if none qualifies); (3) "eligible featured artist" as a featured artist (i.e., prominently featured on a sound recording) who registers with the Fund and provides required identification and payment information; (4) "eligible non-featured artist" as a non-featured artist (e.g., session musician or backup vocalist) who provides required information to the American Federation of Musicians and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund; (5) "service provider" as an entity that provides, contracts for, and controls streams to end users; (6) "stream" as an interactive encrypted digital transmission of a master recording (excluding temporary caching or buffering copies); and (7) "qualifying stream" as the lesser of a master recording's monthly streams accrued by an eligible featured artist or 1 million streams.