US Music Act: a bill to help independent labels?

US Congressman Jerrold Nadler - on Wedenesday, December 12 - introduced the Making United States Independents Competitive (MUSIC) Act, a legislation conceived to help U.S. independent music labels to access the global marketplace, with the aim to help small labels by connecting them to new audiences and distributors at trade shows.

"This bill would help promote U. S. exports in an extremely competitive industry whose talents cannot be outsourced", explained Nadler. But what does this specifically mean? Basically the MUSIC Act would authorize the U.S. Department of Commerce to help independent labels in sending their recording artists to international music trade shows. The help would include covering part or all admission costs, support for travel, booth construction and touring expenses related to foreign music trade shows.
To do this the Government would invest $1 million for each fiscal year from 2013 to 2017.

The bill also defines bill defines concept of independent label, as one with total revenues of less than $50 million, with less than a 1% share of the U.S. recorded music market and not majority owned by a "corporation, partnership, or other association that has total revenues of more than $50,000,000" in the preceding fiscal year.

Nadler is the same Congressman behind the bill (currently in draft form and expected to be introduced in 2013) called Internet Radio Fairness Act: this legislation would put satellite radio and cable radio on the same "willing buyer, willing seller" standard currently used by the Copyright Royalty Board when setting statutory royalty rates for webcasters. The bill, supported by Pandora, seeks, among other things, to compel the CRB to use a different standard - the so-called  801(b) standard - for webcasters. Lower royalty rates are the likely result of the change in the standard.