KISS icon Gene Simmons made a surprise appearance at the White House on Friday, December 5, stepping behind the podium in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. While the musician is in Washington D.C. to receive a prestigious Kennedy Center Honors Award this Sunday, he utilized the high-profile platform to advocate for the American Music Fairness Act.
Simmons is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Intellectual Property Subcommittee on Tuesday, December 9. The proposed legislation aims to close a long-standing loophole in U.S. copyright law that allows terrestrial AM/FM radio stations to play music without paying performance royalties to the recording artists.
Addressing the gathered press corps, Simmons outlined his plan to challenge lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.
“[On Tuesday] I’ll be pointing my finger at both Republicans and Democrats or senators who are joining to hear me talk about the American Music Fairness Act that needs to be passed because your favorite artists — Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and quite a few others — were never paid a single cent when you heard their voices on the radio. Nothing. They were never paid for their performance on the radio, even though radio yearly was making almost 14 billion dollars,” Simmons stated.
The bassist argued that the current system undermines the fundamental American principle of fair compensation for labor. He noted that while his own financial future is secure, the fight is for the next generation of musicians, including his own children.
“In America, if you work hard, you should get paid,” he continued. “But that is a fact that’s been around for forever, and sadly this injustice has been ongoing without anybody paying attention to it. It doesn’t affect us as much ’cause we make a living. But our kids, [my son] Nick and [my daughter] Sophie, are both successful artists, and we, as guardians of their future, are not going to allow this injustice to continue.”
Simmons emphasized the disparity between the massive revenues generated by corporate radio and the lack of financial return for the talent fueling that industry.
“If there’s an artist who’s heard on radio, they should get paid, because the radio stations use our name, our likeness to promote their radio stations on billboards, everywhere else, and they charge advertisers money and they’re making 14 billion — that’s with a ‘B’ — dollars annually, multiplied by, if you have a 50-year career, that’s a lot of money. Can the artists that we all admire — from Sinatra to Elvis — have a little bit of that? Would that be okay?”
He expressed confidence that the legislation would succeed, citing support from the executive branch.
“So this is a bipartisan bill that will get passed because the president is very pro artists,” Simmons said. “America invented the music of the world in the first place. Rock and roll, blues, jazz, most of it from black music, of course, and country and western, hip-hop was invented right here, and we’re letting our artists, the voices of America, American culture, get by working hard on their craft and not getting paid.”
Currently, the United States is the only major democracy that does not mandate performance royalties for radio play, placing it in the company of nations such as North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. This stands in contrast to streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and SiriusXM, which are required to pay performers.
On Tuesday, Simmons will be joined in his testimony by Michael Huppe, the president and CEO of SoundExchange, the non-profit organization responsible for collecting digital streaming royalties.
