The AMP Act is Introduced to the House: Legislation to Provide Producers, Mixers & Engineers with Digital Royalties

Are more dependable royalties on the way for producers, mixers and engineers – by the letter of the law?

(L-R)The Recording Academy’s Daryl P. Friedman, Chief Advocacy & Industry Relations Officer; Maureen Droney, Managing Director, P&E Wing; and Neil Portnow, President/CEO with Michael Huppe, President & CEO of SoundExchange, and GRAMMY winning songwriter/producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers mark the introduction of The AMP Act.

Proposed legislation could mean some increased security for studio pros is on the way, in the form of AMP: the Allocation for Music Producers Act (AMP, H.R. 1457), introduced to Congress by Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) and Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL).

The AMP Act is meant to create a statutory right for producers, mixers and engineers to earn partial royalty rights to the songs they work on. This would mark a departure from tradition, where the terms of performance royalty compensation for studio pros’ work has been up to the artist and their producer/engineer counterparts to negotiate.  Along the way, SoundExchange, the nonprofit entity which collects and distributes digital performance royalties for artists, has opted to honor these agreements between artists and producers, and then issue those direct payments to producers when called for.

With passage of the AMP Act, a statutory right will exist for producers to receive royalties from SoundExchange when they have a letter of direction from a featured artist.  In addition, it will create a new process by which producers can request royalties from artists for older recordings when there is no letter of direction in place, so long as the artist does not object. (Billboard’s Andrew Flanagan explains in depth in this article.)

The AMP Act was crafted with considerable input of the Recording Academy’s Producer’s & Engineers Wing Steering Committee. It was first announced before an assembly of producers and engineers at February’s P&E Wing GRAMMY Week Celebration Honoring Nile Rodgers in Los Angeles.

In a blog post at GRAMMYPRO, it is noted that the hope is that the AMP Act “will become part of the larger, music omnibus (or ‘musicbus’) bill that will address the important issues for all creators.”

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