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This year, in communities across America, bands will belt out “God Bless the USA” and crowds will rise to their feet. It will happen at fireworks shows and on small town sidewalks, at football games and at backyard cookouts, as our country celebrates its 250th anniversary.
I wrote that song more than 40 years ago on a tour bus, between shows, running 300 days a year. Since then, I have served our soldiers who serve far from home in every state of our union and around the world. I never once got tired of it.
But here’s something that most people don’t know. Every time an AM/FM radio station plays that record, the station makes money, but the artists and musicians who recorded it don’t make anything. Not me or the other singers who sing with me. A radio company could broadcast “God Bless the USA” a thousand times, sell advertising for every game, and never pay the people who did it. That is not because of some agreement that we signed and left. It is because of a legislative loophole that Congress has left open for nearly a century.
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I love the radio. Radio has been a part of my life and work for a long time. This is not about punishing local stations or silencing voices that connect communities. It’s about asking the big broadcasting companies in America to follow the same basic principle that all other platforms already follow: when you use music to make money, the people who made that music deserve to participate in it.
This is a basic American idea: when a person’s work creates value, they should be paid fairly for it.
When a farmer plants a crop, he sells it. If a factory produces a product, the people who built it are paid. The recording should not be different.
The men and women who make the recordings make real value in those recordings. But AM/FM radio has thrived for free since the early days of broadcasting, and the country’s biggest broadcasters still depend on it today, drawing masses of viewers from other people’s work, drawing billions in advertising, and leaving artists high and dry.
That is not a free market. It’s a government favor given to one industry and paid to working musicians, kept alive all these years because radio industry lobbyists spent millions to make sure Congress didn’t fix it.
This is not about my royalty check. I am blessed. I am grateful for the work I have had. This is about session players, studio musicians, and backup musicians, people whose names never make a tent. They went in and did a great job, went home with their families, and never saw a dime on AM/FM radio. They are working people, and they should be paid for the work they do.
Radio companies claim to give us free advertising. Spin on the dial sells records and concert tickets, they say, so we should call it a square. Even if that were true, it would not give the radio station the right to use the recording without compensation. Here’s what leaves radio out: every other place that puts my recording in front of a listener pays for that privilege. Spotify. SiriusXM. YouTube. Internet radio. Only classic AM/FM takes our music and plays it for free.
This space calls us beyond our borders. Because the United States does not pay performers for radio plays (a fact we agree with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea) other countries withhold the awards our artists have won, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. And because America doesn’t pay artists, the European Union is now going to withhold another $287 million a year from our artists.
There is a bill in Congress to fix all that. The American Music Fairness Act is a bipartisan proposal that requires major radio companies to finally play by the rules. A partially amended bill, led by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), allows local independent broadcasters to play unlimited music for a few dollars each day while the big, powerful radio organizations finally pay what they are owed.
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If the American Music Fairness Act becomes a law, not only will American broadcasters start paying musicians, but countries around the world who hold royalties because of this criminal will start paying musicians. The EU proposal to withhold more money will be dead on arrival.
This is not a new war. Forty years ago, Frank Sinatra rallied musicians to ask Congress to close the radio loophole, but Congress didn’t listen. I’m determined to finish the job Ol’ Blue Eyes started. And I’m thankful that right now we have a President who knows how to get the job done.
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In his first term, President Trump signed the Music Modernization Act, which finally made it possible for musicians to be paid fairly during broadcasting. The American Music Fairness Act is a piece of legislation that has not been completed, and I know that President Trump will be the one to finally get this bill to the finish line after other presidents have failed.
America has always made a clear promise that hard work should be rewarded. That promise is a good part of what we will be celebrating this year as our country turns 250 years old. Closing the century-long gap that has left musicians unpaid would be a fitting way to honor us, and finally allow the people who record American music to share what their work means.
