Protect Working Musicians Act of 2026

Key Points

• This bill creates a legal safe harbor letting independent musicians and songwriters band together to negotiate licensing terms with major streaming platforms and AI companies, without fear of breaking antitrust laws.
• The bill targets independent creators who earn less than $1 million a year in licensing revenue or qualify as a small business. This includes musicians, songwriters, producers, mixers, and sound engineers who own the copyrights to their work.
• Congress finds that dominant streaming platforms use their market power to force musicians into unfair deals, and artists who refuse those terms have no real leverage because platforms profit from unlicensed uploads anyway.
• A 'Dominant Online Music Distribution Platform' is defined as any streaming or music service with more than $100 million in annual music-related revenue, meaning this applies to major companies like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music.
• The bill also covers AI companies that use music to train their systems, giving independent artists the right to collectively refuse to license their music to generative AI developers.