[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 155 (Tuesday, September 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6259-S6261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ORRIN G. HATCH MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I thank Senators Alexander, Whitehouse, 
Grassley, Feinstein, Coons, and Kennedy for all of their hard work on 
this important bill. I am touched by this gesture. I also thank all of 
the staffs involved, including those in the cloakroom, and the 
legislative counsel for their assistance. I feel like we have been 
really blessed to be able to get this bill through.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if the Senator from Utah has concluded 
his remarks, I would like to say a word or two.
  We have just passed in the Senate a bill that is named the Orrin G. 
Hatch Music Modernization Act. It was an amendment I had offered to the 
bill, not Senator Hatch's amendment. He is the principal sponsor of the 
bill, along with Senator Whitehouse and 82 Members of this body, but I 
ask that it be named in his honor. It is fitting because it is the most 
important piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure 
songwriters in our country are paid and are paid a fair market value 
for their work. It is fitting because Senator Hatch is a songwriter 
himself and has long been an advocate for musicians. So I can think of 
no better way to memorialize his four decades of service in the U.S. 
Senate than by renaming this legislation the Orrin G. Hatch Music 
Modernization Act.
  Under his leadership, as I just mentioned, the bill gained nearly 
unanimous support in the Senate. It passed in the House earlier. After 
its having been thoroughly vetted and compromised and changed, it 
passed unanimously. It went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it 
was considered and passed by voice vote. Then, tonight, it passed by 
voice vote.
  I join with Senator Hatch in especially thanking the other Senators 
who have worked so hard on this, both Democrats as well as 
Republicans--Senator Whitehouse; Senator Durbin, the Assistant 
Democratic Leader, who enjoys going to Nashville on a regular basis and 
has lots of good stories about it; and Senator Coons of Delaware.
  The bill, which passed the House unanimously and has now passed the 
Senate, will go back to the House because we have made some changes in 
the bill. That is the way the process works. We have stayed in close 
touch with the House of Representatives as we have done this. 
Representative Doug Collins and a number of others in the House have 
been really extraordinary leaders in pushing this, so I

[[Page S6260]]

know Representative Collins and others will work hard. My hope is, the 
House will be able to pass the Senate's bill next week and that the 
bill will then go to the President and become law.
  Earlier this evening, Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, was on the 
floor, but he had to leave. I join Senator Hatch in thanking Senator 
Grassley, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for having 
expedited the consideration of this bill and for having been here to 
speak about it.
  Senator Grassley asked me to read these words on his behalf:

       The Music Modernization Act will really help songwriters, 
     artists, publishers, producers, distributors, and other music 
     industry stakeholders. This bill is the product of long and 
     hard negotiations and compromise. Senators Hatch and 
     Alexander especially--but many other Senators--contributed to 
     this bill. I am pleased to support this bill.

  One reason this bill has been successful--and one of the senior 
members of the staff of the Judiciary Committee was talking to me 
tonight and said it was a really remarkable piece of legislation--is 
that it touches so many of the aspects of the creation of music in our 
country. I think that is true. It is a very complex piece of 
legislation.
  I asked some of those who were working on it the other day: Will this 
really help the songwriters? The answer was: Yes, it will.
  We have been able to get so far because the songwriters and the 
publishers and the digital music companies and the broadcasters and the 
record labels and others decided to work together over the last 2 or 3 
years on what they agree on instead of on what they disagree. It has 
taken several years to do this, but I believe it has been worth the 
effort.
  What has happened is that the internet has changed the music business 
in the way it has changed politics, other businesses, and the world. 
More than half the revenues in the music business now come from music 
that is played over the internet. The legislation is necessary because 
the copyright laws of our country haven't kept up with the arrival of 
the internet. In addition to that, they were way out of date before the 
internet ever got here. Those copyright laws haven't been modernized 
since the days of the player piano a century ago. As a result of that, 
today's songwriters are often not paid royalties for their songs when 
their songs are played online, and when they are paid, they aren't paid 
a fair market value. It has become almost impossible for songwriters to 
make a decent living. Songwriters in Nashville--and we have them all 
over Tennessee, but Nashville has thousands of them--are typically taxi 
drivers, teachers, waitresses who are all working to write their first 
hits.
  Last Saturday, I was at the Bluebird Cafe, in Nashville, where 
Senator Hatch has been before. Bob DiPiero was there and was playing 
some of his songs. He told a story of how, in the 1980s, he was 
teaching guitar lessons at the Rivergate Mall. That is how he was 
earning a living. He had moved to Nashville from Ohio and had fallen in 
love with country music. He said he would take a bus out to the 
Rivergate Mall--that took about an hour and an hour back--to teach 
these kids in the afternoons, after school, from 3 to 9 o'clock. During 
the day, he would write songs. Nothing happened until he wrote a song 
called ``American Made,'' which almost everybody knows the words to, 
and that song has done pretty well.
  To give you an idea of what this bill could mean to most songwriters, 
let me tell you a story. I mentioned that songwriters can be taxi 
drivers or teachers or waitresses. They can also be U.S. Senators, like 
Senator Hatch, who actually has a gold record--maybe two--to his 
credit, and he has often cowritten with national songwriters. I had an 
experience too.
  A few years ago, I was in my hometown of Maryville, TN. I went into 
the drugstore, and as I was coming out, there was this older couple who 
was sitting in a pickup truck.
  I asked: How are y'all doing?
  The woman in the pickup truck said: We are just falling apart 
together.
  It just so happened that over that weekend, my son, who is in the 
music business, had a group of songwriters at our home, and they were 
writing songs. So I told that story about the lady saying ``falling 
apart together'' to one of them whose name was Lee Brice, who is a 
well-known songwriter and performer.
  Lee Brice said: Hey, we can do something with that.
  So he and Billy Montana and John Stone wrote the song ``Falling Apart 
Together.''
  ``Falling Apart Together'' went on Lee Brice's album, and it was 
played a lot. According to Nashville's custom, I get a one-fourth 
royalty for the song whenever the song is played. Now, Lee is a pretty 
well-known singer, and you would think those royalties would add up to 
give me a nice income in addition to my salary as a U.S. Senator. I 
checked. In 2016, I reported on my ethics form, which I file each year, 
that my royalties only added up to $101.75. That was for one-fourth of 
a record that was played on an album of a pretty well-known singer and 
writer.
  If you are a songwriter in Nashville or anywhere else, you can't make 
a living on that, but the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act will 
help to fix that. It will help to make sure songwriters are paid a fair 
market value when their songs are played and that they are actually 
paid when their songs are played.
  First, the legislation will make sure songwriters are paid by 
creating a new entity. This is really an elegant solution to a 
complicated problem. This new licensing entity will make it easier for 
digital music companies like Spotify or Amazon or Pandora to obtain 
licenses. Let's say they want to play ``Falling Apart Together.'' All 
they will have to do is go down to the entity and get a license from 
that entity to make sure the four of us who helped to write that song 
will be paid whenever the song is played. This can be a big problem for 
one of the internet companies because they deal in hundreds of 
thousands--millions--of songs, and songwriters end up everywhere in the 
world. So finding them is sometimes impossible. That is not good for 
the songwriter who doesn't get paid. It is not good for the streaming 
company because it might get sued.
  As I said earlier, half of the revenues in the music industry come 
from internet songs. This new entity will collect the royalties each 
time a song is played. It will look for the songwriter and hold onto 
the royalties for 3 years until the songwriter can be found. As I 
mentioned, it will help the digital music companies because it will 
reduce the number of lawsuits and make it a lot simpler to get a 
license for a song.
  Second, the legislation will make sure that songwriters will be paid 
a fair market value for their songs by doing three things.
  First, it will revise outdated songwriter royalty standards. As I 
mentioned earlier, go back a century to the days of the player piano. 
It will replace those with a standard of willing seller and willing 
buyer. What would the song be worth in the free market, not as to the 
statutory rate that is set today?
  The second thing the legislation will do is to allow ASCAP and BMI--
the two largest performing rights organizations--to present new 
evidence about the fair market value of a songwriter's work--like what 
the performer of the song might earn for performing the song--to a 
Federal rate court judge when there is a dispute about what the 
royalties are.
  Finally, the third thing it will do to make sure songwriters are paid 
a fairer rate is to allow ASCAP and BMI to have Federal judges in the 
Southern District of New York, which is where these cases are heard, to 
be randomly assigned to the cases rather than to have all of the 
proceedings before the same judge. We believe that will produce a 
fairer outcome for songwriters.
  This is a big day for songwriters in Nashville and in Memphis and in 
Knoxville, TN, as well as all over the country. It is the most 
important piece of legislation in a generation that will help make sure 
songwriters will be, A, paid when their songs are played and, B, that 
songwriters will be paid a fair market value.
  I thank Senator Hatch for his leadership on this. Because he led this 
effort and because of his prestige in the Senate, we have 82 cosponsors 
of the legislation. We were able to pass it by voice vote tonight after 
it went through the Judiciary Committee.
  I would not want anyone to think that because it passed by such a 
wide

[[Page S6261]]

margin that this was a simple exercise. It was a very complicated 
exercise, and it was in doubt until about an hour and a half ago in 
terms of whether we would be able to do this tonight. Yet we wouldn't 
have been able to have done it without Senator Hatch, so I thank him.
  I think it is fitting, as he retires this year after spending four 
decades in the Senate, that we name the most important piece of 
legislation to help songwriters in a generation after the Senate's 
songwriter, that being the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I want to thank my dear colleague from 
Nashville--really, from Tennessee--for his very kind remarks. He 
covered this really well.
  I have had this experience of writing pretty nice songs, mainly 
because of my cowriters. I have to say that I was shocked that even 
though hundreds of thousands--even millions--of records have been sold 
on some of these songs, the songwriters are paid little and in many 
cases, not paid at all. This will enhance songwriting in America and 
give songwriters a chance to be able to hopefully make a living, 
especially the good ones, even some who are not necessarily in 
Nashville or Hollywood or New York or in any number of other places.
  I want to say that we all are very lucky to have Senator Lamar 
Alexander, who is one of our chief advocates in this area. He 
understands these problems. He has lived with these problems. He has 
anguished over them, and he has played a tremendous role in finally 
getting us to this passed bill.
  This is a very important bill. People don't realize it, but they will 
once this bill is really utilized the way it is allowed.
  I can't say that I am a great songwriter, although I do have one 
platinum and one gold record and some others that will probably go gold 
and platinum. But I can say this: It has been one of the most 
enjoyable, productive, and interesting experiences to write songs--for 
me and for those who write with me.
  All I can say is that I feel really, really indebted to everyone in 
the Senate and the House for doing this to help spur on the music 
industry in this country and to get people treated properly from a 
remunerative standpoint.
  I am grateful for Lamar Alexander and for the leadership that he has 
provided. We couldn't have done this without him.
  Frankly, it is always a pleasure to work with him. He has such a 
great sense of humor. He is a tremendous musician himself. He plays the 
piano as well as anybody I know and, frankly, has done so for a lot of 
us around here. He has uplifted us with his talents. He is a good guy. 
I think in Tennessee, and especially in Nashville, they are very lucky 
to have him as a U.S. Senator.
  I am grateful to the Senate for allowing us to get this done. I am 
grateful for my friends on the Democratic side for opening the door 
here, and I am grateful for my friends on the Republican side, all of 
whom realize how important this bill is and how much good it is going 
to do for America and for the music industry--to enlighten us all, to 
lift us all during times of difficulty and grief and so forth, and to 
provide the incentives to do even better in the future than we have 
done in the past. This is an important bill. I am pleased that I have 
had a role in helping to pass it.
  I am very grateful to Senator Alexander. He is one of my favorite 
people here. I used to chair the Labor and Human Resources Committee 
that he now chairs. I understand how difficult that committee has been. 
This is great and thoughtful legislation, and he has done a tremendous 
job on that committee. He is one of the great Senators, and I am not 
just saying that because he has helped me on this particular bill. I 
just have to say that I am very grateful to him, grateful for his 
leadership in the Senate, and grateful for my friendship with him and 
his friendship with me. He is a really wonderful man, and he makes a 
real difference in this body.
  I want to thank everybody in the Senate for allowing this to happen. 
I am just very, very appreciative and would feel badly if I did not at 
least make that very clear here today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his 
remarks. I think we both would feel remiss if we didn't properly 
acknowledge all of the Senators and especially all of the staff members 
who have put in such long hours and used such professionalism to help 
with this. We will come back to the floor next week and do that 
properly.
  Lindsay Garcia is here with me, as well as Paul McKernan and David 
Cleary. I see Senator Hatch's staff is on the floor, some from the 
Finance Committee. I want to make sure that we do a complete job of 
acknowledging their highly professional work in this complex and 
important piece of legislation. As I said, it is the most important 
piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure that American 
songwriters are paid fairly for their work.
  Thank you.

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