[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 158 (Tuesday, September 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6292-S6296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                 Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, this week, the House of Representatives 
will pass and send to the President the most important copyright reform 
in decades. The name of the bill, which passed this body by unanimous 
vote last week, is the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization 
Act.
  As the Senate was considering the bill, my good friend from 
Tennessee, Senator Alexander, asked to rename the bill in my honor. I 
was touched by this kind gesture from my good friend and by the 
willingness of my colleagues to agree to this suggestion. It wasn't 
necessary though.
  We are also adding to the bill the name of the retiring House 
Judiciary Committee chairman,  Bob Goodlatte, in recognition of all he 
has done to get this bill across the finish line and to improve our 
Nation's copyright laws.
  The Music Modernization Act was years in the making. It was the 
result of countless hours of hard work and many late nights by staff, 
stakeholders, and Members of this body. My friend from Tennessee, 
Senator Alexander, did an outstanding job last week here on the floor 
explaining the need for the bill and how it will improve the music 
marketplace. I will provide a brief summary at this time.
  Our current music licensing laws are badly out of date. Too often, 
songwriters don't get paid when their songs get played, and even when 
they do get paid, they don't get paid at a fair market rate. This has 
made it increasingly difficult for songwriters to make a living doing 
what they love and has harmed our entire music industry. Some have even 
left the field of writing songs. They have given up, and I really 
lament that.
  Songwriters are the lifeblood of American music. In order to have a 
great single or a great album, you first have to have a great song. You 
need the music. You need the lyrics. And you need them to fit together 
in a way that makes you feel something, that tugs at your heart and 
your heartstrings, that makes you feel excited or peaceful or 
nostalgic.
  Songwriting is an art. I know this because I have done it myself. I 
have written dozens of songs over the years, and I even earned a gold 
and a platinum record. I know firsthand how small the royalties are, 
even when your song is a success. It is time to change that. The Music 
Modernization Act will do so.
  The heart of the bill is the creation of a mechanical licensing 
collective to administer reproduction and distribution rights for 
digital music. One of the driving forces in recent years of the decline 
in songwriter royalties has been the transition to digital music. This 
may seem a bit surprising as one might think that the availability of 
millions of songs at the click of a mouse will lead to more royalties, 
given that more music than ever before is now available 
instantaneously.
  The problem is that these big digital music companies, like Pandora 
and Spotify, with their catalogs of millions of songs, simply don't 
have the capability to find every single songwriter for every single 
one of the songs they play. Tracking down the recording artist--that 
is, the singer--usually can be done, but finding songwriters is a 
different story.
  The bill creates a mechanical licensing collective that is tasked 
with identifying songwriters, matching them to sound recordings, and 
then ensuring that a songwriter actually gets paid as he or she should. 
Importantly, this collective will be run by songwriters themselves and 
by their representatives in the publishing community.
  This is an enormous victory for songwriters. For the first time in 
history, songwriters and their representatives will be in charge of 
making sure they get paid when their songs get played.
  This is not the only thing the bill does, not by a long shot. It also 
changes the rate standard for reproduction and distribution rights to 
ensure that songwriters get paid a fair market rate, and it provides 
important protections to digital music companies. It creates a blanket 
digital license for companies like Pandora and Spotify so that they can 
have certainty that they will not be sued when they offer songs for 
download or interactive streaming. It also provides a liability shield 
against past infringement, provided certain conditions are met--again, 
so that digital music companies can have certainty in going forward.

  The Music Modernization Act also makes important changes to 
performance rights. It creates a Federal performance right for pre-1972 
sound recordings and moves our licensing laws away from the patchwork 
of inconsistent State laws and toward a more uniform, coherent Federal 
standard. It ends the rate carve-out that legacy cable and satellite 
providers have enjoyed for two decades that has allowed them to pay 
below-market rates and stave off meaningful competition. This will 
result in fairer rates for recording artists and create a more level 
playing field for new market entrants.

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  The bill also provides that rate proceedings for performance rights 
will rotate among judges and that judges may consider sound recording 
royalty rates when setting corresponding rates for musical works, and 
it makes a clear statement that the Department of Justice should work 
with Congress to ensure there is a proper framework in place to 
administer performance rights for musical works in the event the 
Department decides it is time to sunset the ASCAP and BMI consent 
decrees.
  Lastly, the bill puts in place a formal process for producers, sound 
engineers, and other behind-the-scenes players to receive a share of 
the performance royalties. This will help to ensure that all of the 
participants in the music-making process are fairly compensated for 
their contributions.
  As one can see, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization 
Act is a comprehensive piece of legislation that will have wide-ranging 
impacts across the music landscape. It touches all sectors of the music 
industry and makes important reforms to ensure that songwriters, 
musicians, and other key contributors to American music are treated 
fairly.
  There is a reason this bill passed the Senate unanimously and why it 
will pass the House with overwhelming support, which is that all sides 
of the music industry came together to find a way to make our music 
laws better, to make them function properly, and to update them for the 
digital age. No side got everything it wanted, but everyone got 
something. At the end of the day, we have a piece of legislation we can 
all be proud of.
  Now, the fact that this bill passed unanimously does not mean that it 
was an easy lift--not by any means. This was an extraordinarily 
complex, multifaceted piece of legislation with dozens of moving parts 
and cross-cutting issues that impacted stakeholders in varying ways. 
Each component of the bill was crucial to its passage, which made 
negotiating and revising the legislative text an exceedingly delicate 
process. There were numerous unexpected developments along the way, 
each of which had to be handled in a manner that did not upset the 
bill's careful balance. So I need to spend some time today in thanking 
everyone who made it possible for us to get to this point. How often 
does the Senate pass a 186-page bill unanimously? Almost never. That 
alone tells you how well the bill's sponsors and their staffs managed 
this process.
  I first need to thank Senator Alexander, my dear friend from 
Tennessee. He has been by my side throughout the entire process. 
Senator Alexander is a tireless advocate for songwriters in his State 
and for music in general in his State. This bill would not be on its 
way to the President's desk in short order without all of his hard 
work. I acknowledge it and compliment him in every way for it.
  Senator Alexander's staff has been outstanding as well. In 
particular, I need to recognize David Cleary, his chief of staff; 
Lindsay Garcia, his general counsel; and Paul McKernan, his former 
legislative assistant. They were wonderful to work with and deserve 
tremendous credit for this victory.
  I next need to thank Senator Whitehouse, who has been with me 
throughout this entire journey as well. His chief counsel, Lara Quint, 
has been a terrific help and an important liaison with my Democratic 
colleagues.
  I need to thank Chairman Grassley, who shepherded this bill through 
the committee and made important contributions to the bill's oversight 
and transparency provisions. His deputy staff director and chief civil 
counsel, Rita Lari, put a lot of work into this bill and into the 
accompanying committee report. Her determination and dedication made 
this bill better and helped to bring us to this point today.
  Ranking Member Feinstein deserves significant credit as does her 
counsel, Anant Raut. They helped to make this bill a bipartisan 
success.
  Senator Coons played a pivotal role in this legislation. He was a 
champion of title II, the CLASSICS Act, which creates a Federal 
performance right for pre-1972 sound recordings. Special recognition 
goes to Jamie Simpson, in his office, who led us through some 
challenging negotiations and made sure we came out all right.
  Senator Kennedy was the Republican lead on the CLASSICS Act, and I am 
glad to have had this opportunity to work with him and with Nick 
Hawatmeh and Brittany Sadler from his staff.
  I also need to recognize two House colleagues. The first is 
Representative Doug Collins, who has fought tirelessly for this bill. 
He and his staff have been unstoppable. Every obstacle, every hurdle 
they have worked to overcome. Even after the bill passed the House, 
they did not let up. They were 100 percent committed to this 
legislation, and I cannot thank them enough for everything they have 
done. Brendan Belair, Representative Collins' chief of staff, and Sally 
Rose Larson, his legislative director, have been absolutely 
outstanding.
  The other House colleague I need to recognize is my good friend  Bob 
Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Like me, Bob 
is retiring this year. He has been a wonderful chairman. I have had the 
privilege of working with him on a number of initiatives that have 
become law--a whole raft of them. I am so glad to have had the 
opportunity to work with him on this legislation before we leave 
office, and I am so pleased to share my name with his on the bill.
  I would like to give a special shout-out to his chief counsel for 
intellectual property, Joe Keeley, who played a crucial role in 
shepherding this bill through the House.
  Now I need to turn to the industry stakeholders who came together to 
make the compromises that made this bill possible and who did a superb 
job of educating Congress on the need for this bill and how it is going 
to make a difference for songwriters and musicians.
  The first are the Nashville Songwriters Association International and 
Songwriters of North America, which helped me and my colleagues to 
understand how our current laws are hurting songwriters and what we 
needed to do to help them. Next is the National Music Publishers 
Association, which refused to give up on this bill even when the path 
forward looked murky at best. ASCAP and BMI were also crucial players 
that helped to energize tens of thousands of songwriters to support 
this effort.
  I next need to thank the Recording Industry Association of America, 
as well as SoundExchange and the Recording Academy, for their work on 
behalf of recording artists and their willingness to make the necessary 
compromises to get this bill through.
  The Digital Media Association and its member companies, including 
Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, and YouTube, also 
deserve special recognition. They were essential in helping me and my 
colleagues to understand the uncertainties of the current digital music 
marketplace and why the reforms in the Music Modernization Act are 
necessary to the continued growth and success of the digital music 
ecosystem. The Internet Association similarly played an important 
educative function, and I thank the association and its members for 
their support.
  The final industry stakeholder I would like to thank is the National 
Association of Broadcasters. In particular, I would like to thank the 
association for its willingness to compromise and for the support it 
lent to later stages of the legislative process. The 50-State support 
that the NAB gave to the bill made an important difference to a number 
of my colleagues, and I thank the NAB for its advocacy.
  The final thanks I need to offer is to my staff. This bill would not 
have happened without them and their tireless dedication.
  I would first like to highlight my communications team, Matt Whitlock 
and Ally Riding. They did a terrific job in putting together materials 
to help other offices and the public understand this bill and its 
importance. They also showed some pretty serious video production 
chops.
  I would next like to thank my legislative director, Matt Jensen. Matt 
worked diligently behind the scenes to identify the proper vehicle and 
offset for the bill. He reviewed just about every fund and fee in the 
entire Federal Government and would not give up.
  Next up is my chief of staff, Matt Sandgren. Matt has been with me 
now for 15 years. He is one of the finest aides I have ever had. He 
spent years as my go-to intellectual property counsel before becoming 
my chief of staff and has been an essential part of this process. He 
had the foresight and strategic

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know-how to get this bill across the finish line. No last-minute 
obstacle was going to stop him.
  Finally, I would like to thank my chief counsel, Chris Bates. Chris 
oversaw this bill from start to finish--from the very first stakeholder 
meetings, where we talked about broad outlines, to last week, when he 
sat next to me here on the floor while the Senate passed the bill by 
voice vote. For well over a year now, he has dealt expertly with dozens 
of stakeholders and 100 Senate offices. He has had the judgment to know 
when to strike deals and when to push forward. As the careful lawyer 
that he is, he has made sure, at every step along the way, that the 
bill's text has been precise, accurate, and tightly drafted.
  This bill has been as complicated an endeavor as any bill I have done 
during my 42 years in the Senate, and Chris deserves immense credit for 
the way he has seen this bill through to enactment.
  Let me just say that this bill means so much to me. It was a number 
of years ago that a wonderful woman songwriter named Janice Kapp Perry 
came to me and said: You write poetry. I would like you to write some 
songs with me.
  I thought that was a really nice offer. So I sat down and wrote 10 
songs that weekend, all of which were put into recorded form, and we 
have written a lot of songs ever since.
  Then, all of a sudden, I had people from all over the country come to 
me and say: I want to write some music with you. I have had artists and 
songwriters and just good people come and really help me to learn this 
business and learn what to do. It has been one of the great joys of my 
life because I love music.
  When I was a kid, my mother had an old violin, and I learned to play 
that violin all the way through grade school, high school, and even in 
college. I also had piano lessons--6 months of them. I have been able 
to play most of the popular music on the piano ever since. I am not an 
accomplished pianist like Senator Alexander, but I certainly enjoy 
plinking on the keys.
  Then, I had others on my staff who really helped me to understand 
that music is a tremendously wonderful thing for people. It is 
uplifting. It is inspiring. It can be humorous. There are so many 
things it can be.
  I have also enjoyed writing the lyrics for well over 100 songs. I 
have one gold and one platinum record and a number of others that are 
on their way, and I just feel really good that I have had the help of 
all of these people to be able to do something that really brings me a 
great deal of joy.
  I thank Senator Alexander. He has been an inspiration to me. He is a 
wonderful leader for his State and for Nashville. They couldn't have a 
better leader in Senator Alexander, plus his being a wonderful person 
too. He has been a great aide to me--a great help to me--throughout 
this process, and I care for him a great deal.
  There are others, of course, I would like to mention, but I will do 
that separately at a later date.
  I am grateful for music in my life. I am grateful I have had this 
privilege of writing songs, some of which have been heralded and 
acclaimed. I am grateful for those who have had the patience to work 
with me. I am grateful the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has sung a number of 
my songs--and they don't sing junk, let me tell you. You have to really 
make the grade to have your song sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 
They have done a few of my songs, and I am grateful for that.
  There are so many others I would like to compliment at this time. Let 
me say this. I have taken enough time, but I am very grateful for this 
privilege of learning how to write music and having written a number of 
songs that are really popular today. I am grateful for my friends in 
the Senate who have tolerated me. I am grateful for the poetry in my 
life, which I have written since I was a kid. I am just grateful to God 
for the many blessings I have had.
  I am grateful to be a U.S. Senator. I am very grateful for the 
privilege of associating with all of these wonderful people and for 
those in the past who have served with us as well.
  I would like to say more, but I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, building on Senator Hatch's comments, 
we are grateful for his service to the U.S. Senate for more than four 
decades and grateful he is a songwriter. Of course, he comes from a 
culture and a faith that emphasizes music.
  As a little boy in the East Tennessee mountains, I remember every 
week listening on the Zenith radio to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I 
think everybody in Utah and in the Mormon faith actually grows up 
learning to sing and to enjoy music.
  Orrin Hatch is not just a U.S. Senator, he is a genuine songwriter. 
He has a gold and a platinum record. I know many national songwriters 
who have cowritten with him, and they admire him greatly.
  I can think of no more important tribute to him than the Hatch-
Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, which should pass the House this 
week and be on its way to the President. Then it will be, as Senator 
Hatch said, the single-most important piece of legislation in decades 
or in a generation that changes copyright law in a way that is fair to 
songwriters.
  Senator Hatch is correct. This has not been easy. It has taken 
several years. There are a great many different people to it. The heavy 
lifts and the unexpected developments were occurring all the way down 
to about 30 minutes before it passed last Tuesday night.
  It has been a great privilege to work with Senator Hatch and his 
staff on this legislation whom I will have more to say about in a 
minute.
  The Senator from Utah has done a very good job of explaining what the 
bill does, but the truth is, copyright law is complicated. About the 
first 25 times somebody explains to you the law governing songwriting, 
you will not have a clue what they are talking about. So let me tell a 
couple of stories about songwriting that might help make it clear.
  Right after World War II, two national songwriters, Pee Wee King and 
Redd Stewart, were driving from Memphis to Nashville, back before the 
interstates were created, and one said to the other: Well, Missouri has 
a waltz and Kentucky has a waltz, why doesn't Tennessee have a waltz? 
So on that drive--probably about a 5-hour drive then--they took a 
matchbox, an old penny matchbox that held wooden matches, threw the 
matches on the floorboard, and on the back of it they wrote the words 
to the ``Tennessee Waltz.''
  Now, the ``Tennessee Waltz'' was already a waltz. It was called the 
``No Name Waltz.'' People played it and sang it in different places. It 
was just a random song, but they added these few words to it. Then, 
that night when he got back, Pee Wee King wrote it on a lead sheet. 
That is what you call a blank page of music. He took it in to Fred Rose 
the next day, who was his publisher. Fred Rose was the publisher for 
Hank Williams, Roy Acuff--all kinds of people. He made one change in 
the words. Where it said: ``Oh, the Tennessee waltz, the Tennessee 
waltz,'' he changed the words to ``I remember the night and the 
Tennessee waltz.''
  That song went nowhere for a while. It was performed around by Pee 
Wee King until Mercury Records decided they had a song, a different 
song, called ``Boogie Woogie Santa Claus.'' They wanted the hottest 
young female singer in America to sing it so they flew Patti Page to 
New York in about 1950. She sang ``Boogie Woogie Santa Clause'' on 
Mercury Records, but they had nothing to put on the back of the record. 
So somebody suggested they just throw on the back of the record this 
``Tennessee Waltz.''
  Well, the ``Tennessee Waltz'' sold 5 million copies. It became the 
most recorded song ever by a female artist. In many ways, it is the 
Magna Carta of country music.
  So the question is, How did that happen? What is the mystery that 
causes a waltz that is just kicked around for a long time, has a few 
words placed on it by a few songwriters driving from Memphis to 
Nashville, to suddenly sell 5 million copies? Well, none of us really 
knows. It is just a magnificent form of art.

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  All over my State of Tennessee, there are thousands and thousands and 
thousands of teachers, taxi drivers, waitresses, people thinking of 
songs, getting together and writing songs, hoping to have the next No. 
1 hit.
  I saw Bob DiPiero at the Bluebird Cafe a week ago Saturday.
  I say to Senator Hatch, he was a guitar teacher in RiverGate Mall, 
outside of Nashville, in the early 1980s. At about 3, he would take a 
bus from downtown Nashville out to RiverGate Mall, and he would teach 
guitar lessons to all of these kids after school until 9. Then, during 
the day, he would write songs. He didn't do well at all until one day 
he wrote a song with the lyrics: ``My baby is American made, born and 
bred in the U.S.A.'' Well, everybody knows that song now, and Bob 
DiPiero is a great songwriter. So I guess he makes a living off of 
songwriting, but lots of people don't.
  This bill is about songs that are played over the internet. The way 
Bob DiPiero or Redd Stewart or Pee Wee King's descendants would get 
paid for their creative work is whenever the song is played over the 
internet, this Hatch-Goodlatte legislation says: We have a way to make 
sure you get paid if you are the songwriter or you own the rights, and, 
No. 2, we have changed the law to make it more likely that you will get 
a fair market value for what you get paid--those two things.
  I have asked several of the songwriters and the people in the music 
industry: Do you really think this will make a difference? They, to a 
person, say yes.
  Will it make it as good as it was? No, it probably will not, but it 
will be fair, and it will create an environment where not just Bob 
DiPiero can get paid for ``My baby is American made'' but where a lot 
more songwriters can make a decent living because they get paid and get 
paid a fair market value for their work.
  I will tell you another story I have repeated on the floor about 
that. Unfortunately, I don't have a gold record, and I don't have a 
platinum record, but I can play the piano. I am as grateful for music 
as Senator Hatch is. When I was 4, my mother took me to the Maryville 
College, and I began piano lessons, which I continued until I was 16.
  Senator McConnell, the majority leader, who had a wonderful and 
sainted mother who helped him recover from polio, once told me the one 
thing he regrets about his mother is she allowed him to stop taking 
piano lessons.
  I said back to Senator McConnell: I don't ever remember ever having a 
choice. I made a deal with my mother that I would practice 30 minutes 
in the morning, and I would get to do what I wanted to in the 
afternoon, and I had a wonderful time with music.
  I say to the Senator from Utah, when I was Governor, I was trying to 
think what could unite our State. The Presiding Officer probably had 
thoughts like that when he was Governor of his State. All I could think 
of that would unite our big, long State, from Memphis to Bristol, was 
music, from Beale Street in Memphis through Music City in Nashville, to 
the home of country music in Bristol, TN, where they brought a 
recording machine in 1927 and called for the hillbillies to come down 
out of the mountains. Among the hillbillies who came and had their 
music recorded were Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family. That was the 
beginning of what we call country music, what you hear on the radio in 
Nashville.
  So as I was thinking about what united Tennessee, I thought, well, 
music. I asked the legislature in our State in the 1980s--and they did 
it--to appropriate some moneys for endowments for all of our community 
orchestras. There are about two dozen of them. If we give the Nashville 
Symphony or the Greenville Community Orchestra some State dollars, if 
they matched it, then they would have a little endowment that would 
support that music. I went around the State and played the piano with 
all of those community orchestras and had a good time when people came 
out to see the Governor make a mistake or miss a chord or that kind of 
thing.
  So music is terribly important to our State, as it is to Utah and as 
it is to our country.
  Ken Burns has a new film coming out. I think Ken Burns is America's 
greatest storyteller today. I mean, we have other good ones, but today 
he is. He has done more than 30 films. There is one about the Mayo 
Clinic that is out today. There is the Civil War, National Parks, all 
of those films--Vietnam more recently. His new film is the film he 
thinks may be the most popular film of all he has produced, of the 30, 
and it is about country music. It is about the stories and the lives of 
the people whom country music is about.
  I think of Jessi Alexander, whom I just heard play a song at the 
Bluebird Cafe. She had heard on the radio about the father from Texas 
whose son was killed in Afghanistan, and they asked him how he grieved, 
and he said: I drive his truck. She wrote a song, ``I Drive Your 
Truck,'' about that father and his son who had been killed defending 
our country. It won the song of the year, as it should have.
  So these emotional stories about life and death and whiskey and love 
and romance and cheating and everything that goes into human nature, 
these are the stories that make it into these songs.
  Sometimes--sometimes--they are like the ``Tennessee Waltz.'' You put 
some words with a waltz that has been around for a while, and out comes 
5 million records sold.
  Sometimes it is more like this story. I was coming out of the 
drugstore in Maryville, TN, and I ran into an old couple in a pickup 
truck. I walked by them, and I said: How are you all doing?
  The older lady said: Well, we are just falling apart together.
  So I told that story to Lee Brice and some songwriters who were at 
our home for the weekend writing songs.
  They said: We could do something with that, and they wrote a song, 
``Falling Apart Together.'' Lee Brice is a pretty well-known singer. He 
and Billy Montana and John Stone wrote it. According to Nashville 
tradition, they gave me a fourth of the royalties because that is what 
they do. If you make any contribution to the song, you get a little 
piece of the action.
  I thought: Well, this is good. I can actually do that as a U.S. 
Senator. That is legal. The Ethics Committee will approve that. So in 
2016, the royalty I received for ``Falling Apart Together,'' which was 
recorded by Lee Brice and is on one of his albums, was $101.75. You 
can't make a living on that.
  What Senator Hatch and the Senate has done, and the House is about to 
do and it will go on to the President, is to change the law.
  First, it will create an entity. Those two songwriters who wrote the 
``Tennessee Waltz'' after World War II, let's say their great-
grandchildren now own all of the rights, and they are spread all over 
the place. Let's say Spotify wants to play the ``Tennessee Waltz.'' Now 
all they have to do is to go down to this new entity to get a license. 
They have a right to do it, and nobody can sue them. It is the entity's 
job to go find all of these 100 descendants and pay them the royalty.
  Then we changed the law to try to make sure the royalties are a fair 
market value. Now, in that case, if some company owns that, it might be 
easier to find them, but that is why everybody came together to pass 
this bill.
  Specifically, the legislation will help make sure songwriters are 
paid when their songs are played by creating a new simplified licensing 
entity.
  This new licensing entity will make it easier for digital music 
companies to obtain a license to play songs and ensure songwriters are 
paid when their music is played.
  This new entity helps songwriters because it will collect royalties 
each time a song is played, look for the songwriter, and hold on to 
their royalties for 3 years until they can be found.
  This new entity also helps digital music companies because it makes 
sure songwriters get paid, which means fewer lawsuits.
  Second, the legislation will help make sure songwriters are paid a 
fair market value for their work by doing three things.
  The legislation revises outdated songwriter royalty standards to 
ensure songwriters are paid a fair market rate for their work. The new 
royalty payments will be based on what a willing buyer and willing 
seller would agree to in a free market--not the statutory below-market 
standard of today.
  The legislation allows ASCAP and BMI--the two largest performing 
rights

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organizations--to present new evidence about the fair market value of a 
songwriter's works--like what the performer earns for their songs--to a 
Federal rate court judge when there is a dispute about royalty rates 
for songwriters.
  The legislation allows ASCAP and BMI to have Federal judges in the 
Southern District of New York randomly assigned to hear their rate 
cases, rather than have all the proceedings occur before the same judge 
each time. This should lead to better outcomes for songwriters.
  This change in the law made sense in the internet world. Today, in 
the world we live in, more than half of the revenues in the music 
business are for songs played over the internet. The internet has 
changed music just like it has changed everything else. This changes 
the law to put us into the internet age. It changes some laws that have 
been around for centuries, since the days of the player piano.
  Since there are others who will be wanting to speak, I have had other 
chances to talk about the bill. I have said most of what I wanted to 
say, except for a couple of thank-yous.
  First, Orrin Hatch is exactly the right leader for this bill in the 
Senate for a variety of reasons. He is chairman of one important 
committee and nearly ranking on another. Through his prestige and his 
position in the Senate and through the respect we have for him, he was 
able to ask Senators to step back and allow us to do this very complex 
piece of legislation in a situation where any one Senator could have 
blocked it--and many did for a while, until they were persuaded not to.

  I want to thank Chairman Grassley and Senator Feinstein for moving it 
through the Judiciary Committee expeditiously. This could not have 
happened if Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer had not created an 
environment in which we could do this. Senator Hatch mentioned Senator 
Whitehouse and Senator Coons, who were among the lead Democratic 
cosponsors. We had 82 cosponsors of this bill. We only have 100 
Senators, and we had 82 cosponsors of the bill.
  I want to particularly thank Senator Durbin, who may be a Democrat 
from Illinois, but he loves to go to Nashville and go to the Grand Ole 
Opry, and he jumped on early. He is the No. 2 Democrat, and he has been 
a big help.
  Doug Collins, Hakeem Jeffries, and Darrell Issa in the House of 
Representatives were real leaders from the beginning, and, of course,  
Bob Goodlatte and Ranking Member Nadler were as well.
  I think it is important to join Senator Hatch in mentioning again 
those music groups whom we sat down with more than 2 years ago and 
said: Look, we have been here for a long time, and we could continue to 
argue about what you disagree on or we could try to pass what you can 
agree on. And for the last 2\1/2\ years, they have worked to 
compromise, to agree on what they could agree on, and they have done 
that in an important way.
  I thank the Nashville Song Writers Association International--Bart 
Herbison especially, but a whole bunch of them, including the National 
Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, BMI, the Recording Academy, Sound 
Exchange, Digital Media Association, Song Writers of North America, 
Internet Association, Recording Industry Association of America, and 
the National Association of Broadcasters, which came with a strongly 
support recommendation in the end, which was a big, big help.
  Senator Hatch was correct. The most valuable players in all of this 
most likely have been the staff members on both sides of the aisle and 
in both Houses who helped put the competing interests together--and 
there were many--in a way that produced this bill.
  I would especially like to thank Lindsey Garcia, who is sitting here 
with me, and Paul McKernan, who worked on this for a long time, and 
David Cleary and Allison Martin on my staff.
  Chris Bates, Matt Jensen, and Matt Sandgren on Senator Hatch's staff 
have been terrific and essential.
  I thank Rita Lari from the Senate Judiciary staff. We were joking the 
other day. When we first talked to her about this, she said: Are you 
sure you can pass a bill like this? Most people didn't think it was 
possible to get all of the competing interests here to agree.
  Congressman Doug Collins and his staff have really been at the 
forefront of this, including Sally Rose Larson.
  Republican floor staff Megan Mercer was a big help.
  A special shout-out to Reema Dodin, who works for Senator Durbin and 
who was a consistent help but was especially helpful on last Tuesday 
afternoon when we only had a little bit of time and we needed to get 
some last-minute changes cleared in the Democratic cloakroom as well as 
the Republican cloakroom.
  This would be a good exercise for a chapter in a book on legislation 
sometime. But it is going to be the Hatch-Goodlatte Music Modernization 
Act, and the result is going to be that thousands and thousands of 
songwriters in this country for the first time in a long time are, A, 
going to get paid for their work, and, B, they are going to get paid 
more of a fair market value, as they should.
  I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have worked on it, and I 
thank all of my colleagues for working so well with Senator Hatch and 
me to get it done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.