[Editor Charlie sez: Our friend and supporter Blake Morgan has an important opinion post on the bi-partisan American Music Fairness Act (AMFA) in The Hill, a long-time and influential DC insider journal. Blake tells the human story of why artists need the AMFA legislation and the #IRespectMusic campaign.]

We musicians are used to fighting. For our livelihoods, our families, our dreams. In recent years we’ve fought battles we’ve neither sought nor provoked, against powerful corporate forces devaluing music’s worth. Streaming companies, music pirates, and AM/FM radio broadcasters who, in the United States, pay nothing––zero––to artists for radio airplay.

It’s shocking, but true: The United States is the only democratic country in the world where artists don’t get paid for radio airplay. Only Iran, North Korea, and China stand with the United States in this regard. ADVERTISEMENT

Broadcasters make billions of dollars each year off our music, and artists don’t earn a penny. This impacts not only the artist, but session musicians, recording engineers, songwriters. Virtually everyone in music’s economy. 

Isn’t being paid fairly for one’s work a bedrock American value?

Read Blake’s post on The Hill and sign the #IRespectMusic campaign and tell Congress you want fairness for artists!