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The Living Wage for Musicians Act would pay artists from a streaming fund. A year on, it has not moved

H.R. 5664 would add a fee of half the subscription price, between $4 and $10, to every music streaming subscription and take 10% of streamers' other music revenue, then pay the money straight to human recording artists, capped at a million streams per track a month. It was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on 30 September 2025, and Congress.gov shows no action since.

Key facts

  • What happened: Rep. Rashida Tlaib reintroduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act as H.R. 5664 on 30 September 2025, written with the union UMAW. Its only recorded action is referral to the House Judiciary Committee; it has seven cosponsors, all Democrats.
  • How: streamers add a fee equal to 50% of each subscription (minimum $4, maximum $10) and pay 10% of non-subscription revenue into a fund run by a non-profit; 90% goes to registered featured artists by qualifying streams, 10% to session players and backing vocalists.
  • Why it matters: the bill's "penny per stream" is a target, not a rate in the text. What artists would get depends on how many people keep paying a subscription that would cost up to half as much again, and the 2024 version died in the same committee.

The pitch for the Living Wage for Musicians Act is simple: make streaming pay recording artists directly, without going through their label contracts. Rep. Rashida Tlaib reintroduced it on 30 September 2025 as H.R. 5664, and her office says it was co-created with United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW). A year on, the bill's Congress.gov record lists one action: referral to the House Judiciary Committee on the day it was introduced. When we checked in October 2026 it had seven cosponsors, all Democrats, the last two added in January 2026.

The case for it starts from a familiar number. Tlaib's office puts Spotify's average payout at about $0.003 a stream, and says that at that rate an artist needs more than 800,000 streams a month to match a full-time $15-an-hour job. UMAW's Make Streaming Pay campaign says the bill is "built to pay artists a minimum penny per stream". The bill text is more interesting, and less certain, than that slogan.

How would the money be raised?

Two ways, both set out in the bill text:

  • A subscriber fee. Every person charged a subscription would pay an extra "living wage royalty fee" of 50% of the subscription price, no less than $4 and no more than $10 a month. It must appear as its own line on the receipt, and the streamer can't count it as content revenue or cost.
  • A levy on everything else. Each quarter the service pays 10% of its non-subscription revenue from music streaming, advertising included, into the fund.

The bill defines a stream as an interactive, on-demand transmission, which on our reading leaves radio-style services out. A "subscription fee" includes a music plan sold as part of a bundle with other products of "more than token value", which matters after a court let Spotify treat Premium as an audiobook bundle to pay songwriters less.

How would it be paid out?

The Register of Copyrights picks a single non-profit, with artist representatives on its board, to run an Artist Compensation Royalty Fund. Of the money, 90% goes to featured artists and 10% to non-featured artists such as session musicians and backing vocalists, paid through the existing AFM and SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund.

A featured artist's share equals their share of "qualifying streams" in the quarter. Two definitions do most of the work:

  • The cap. Qualifying streams are counted per recording per month, up to 1,000,000. Plays beyond that don't count, so the megahits stop diluting the pool and the money spreads further down the chart.
  • Who counts. An "artist" is a human creator, and the bill excludes corporate entities and "fully generative artificial intelligence". UMAW's January 2026 update highlights that AI tracks would not be eligible. That wording isn't new: the 2024 version, H.R. 7763, had the same definition, and the two texts are otherwise near-identical.

Artists must register and give payment details to be eligible. Payments the fund can't match to an artist are held in trust for a period the administrator decides is reasonable, then go back into the pool.

Does the maths reach a penny?

The bill sets no per-stream rate. The rate is whatever the pool, divided by all registered artists' qualifying streams, comes to that quarter. Writer Andrew Whipple made this point in 2024, calling the penny messaging a misreading of a bill that sets no fixed rate.

Take Spotify's current US prices. Individual at $12.99 would carry a fee of about $6.50. Student at $6.99 hits the $4 floor, a 57% surcharge. Duo at $18.99 adds about $9.50, and Family at $21.99 hits the $10 cap, about $1.67 per account for six people. By our arithmetic, a solo subscriber's fee, after the 10% set aside for non-featured artists, funds a penny each for about 585 streams a month. Heavy listeners and family plans pull the rate down, and the ad levy and the million-stream cap push it back up. Neither the bill nor its backers publish a model of where the rate would land.

What do the critics say?

The early critiques came with the 2024 bill and still apply, since the text barely changed. On Hypebot, Bobby Owsinski questioned whether subscriptions would hold up after a 50% rise, whether artists would trust a government-designated body with their money after the MLC's troubles, whether labels would accept money bypassing them, and whether artists have the political weight to beat the streamers' lobbyists. Whipple liked that it works as a tax and redistributes towards smaller artists, but flagged open questions on annual plans and bundles. The bill defines a subscription fee as a monthly fee, and says nothing on annual billing.

What are its prospects?

Thin, on the record so far. The 2024 bill got no further than referral to Judiciary. Congress.gov lists no Senate companion for H.R. 5664, and no hearing or markup. This Congress ends on 3 January 2027. If H.R. 5664 hasn't moved by then, it would have to be introduced a third time.

What we think

The bill is better as a design than as a slogan, and the "penny per stream" headline is hurting it. Promising a fixed rate invites the obvious rebuttal, and it hides the parts that are actually new: a per-track cap that redistributes from hits to the middle, a pool that only registered humans can draw from, and a payment route that doesn't depend on recoupment. As AI uploads pile up on the services, a pool that only human artists' streams can draw from deals with dilution by definition, rather than by a platform's private rules.

The real test is price, and the bill's backers should face it directly. A flat 50% surcharge falls hardest on students, the floor makes them pay 57%, and the cap makes a six-person family plan the cheapest per listener. If the fee drives people to cancel or downgrade to ad-supported tiers, the fund pays less and existing royalties, which depend on subscription revenue, shrink too. Mid-tier artists with steady streams across many tracks would gain most. Megastars gain least, because of the cap. Labels would object, because this is money they can't recoup against.

Its strongest use now is probably as a benchmark. If a statutory fund is politically out of reach in this Congress, it at least shows what direct, capped, human-only payment would look like, and labels and services that oppose it should be asked what they'd offer instead. We'd like to see UMAW publish a costed model: the subscriber numbers, stream counts and churn assumptions behind the penny. A bill that has spent a year in committee needs that more than another letter campaign.

Sources

Sources

  1. H.R. 5664 (IH), Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2025, bill text, U.S. Government Publishing Office (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  2. H.R.5664, Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2025 (actions and cosponsors), Congress.gov (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  3. H.R. 7763 (IH), Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2024, bill text, U.S. Government Publishing Office (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  4. H.R.7763, Living Wage for Musicians Act of 2024 (actions), Congress.gov (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  5. Tlaib Introduces Living Wage for Musicians Act, Office of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  6. The Living Wage for Musicians Act, United Musicians and Allied Workers (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  7. UMAW News: January 2026, United Musicians and Allied Workers (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  8. Spotify Premium plans (US), Spotify (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  9. The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, U.S. National Archives (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  10. Living Wage For Musicians Act Excites Many But Worries Others, Hypebot. Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
  11. Thoughts on the Living Wage For Musicians Act, dot txt (Andrew Whipple). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.

Researched with AI assistance, written and checked by WATMM Desk.

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