Future of Music Coalition

New documentary on Ticketmaster and the resale racket does a pretty solid job of laying out what's at stake. Good to see musician voices included!

Vice News Presents - Sold Out: Ticketmaster And The Resale Racket (2023) Inside the hustle of a group of shadowy ticket brokers to buy up the best seats in the house and sell them at a huge profit – and how a ticketing monopoly enables them.

The National Association of Broadcasters purports to speak for the interests of "local broadcasters", yet they continue to support deregulation that allows big station groups to gobble up truly local broadcasters, and oppose LPFM stations' attempts to boost their wattage and serve more listeners.

It’s Time to Provide Small Radio Stations With the Certainty They Need to Thrive Corporate media behemoths are thwarting community stations’ efforts to compete while systematically gobbling them up and stripping them for parts.

As we told Rolling Stone, “It shouldn’t be artists’ jobs to figure out how to solve every problem, and it shouldn’t be fans’ jobs to understand how to reform everything that’s broken in the industry; these are jobs for policymakers, and a huge part of the problem is that before now, policymakers haven’t done a nearly good enough job of centering the experiences of artists in these debates.”

What the Hell Happened With the Cure's Tickets This Week? The Cure’s on-sale this week showed the holistic problems the fractured ticketing business faces, from fees on the primary market to scalping on the secondary side

Sometimes not all the tickets for live concerts go on sale at the same time--and that can be a good thing for artists, venues, promoters, and fans. Here's why:

What are "holdbacks" in concert ticketing? — Future of Music Coalition Artists, venues, and promoters may elect to withhold some tickets from the general onsale. There are many reasons why.

What can we do to make ticketing less of a nightmare? Turns out: a whole lot. We spoke to Pitchfork about some of the best ideas.

6 Ways to Fix the Broken Concert Ticketing System Scoring tickets for your favorite artist’s tour seems tougher than ever, but there are practical steps the industry could take to make things better.

We're longtime supporters of community broadcasters, and it's been heartening to see their steadfast support of the American Music Fairness Act which would ensure that musicians get paid when they're played on AM/FM radio .

Big corporate radio lobbyists have consistently claimed that paying musicians will put small stations out of business. But these are the same lobbyists who fought against the Local Community Radio Act, which is what allowed many small stations to take to the airwaves in the first place!

We're so proud to National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Alliance for Community Media, Prometheus Radio Project, Media Alliance, Common Frequency, and REC Networks! networks

United For Economic Justice: Community Broadcasters Stand With Music Creators in Support of American Music Fairness Act Broad Coalition Calls on Congress to Finally Pass Legislation to Pay Artists for AM/FM Radio Plays and Create Certainty for Local Broadcasters

ARTIST ANNOUNCEMENT: Please welcome Bartees Strange to this summer's lineup. On his behalf, Newport Festivals Foundation has made a grant to Future of Music Coalition which helps musicians navigate the complicated business structures and public policies that impact their lives and livelihoods. Funds will help cover design costs for free educational materials they are creating to help musicians understand how music licensing works, and help ensure they get paid what they've earned when their music is used.

Join Open Markets Institute, Future of Music Coalition, and other co-hosts, today, February 15th at 9:30 AM ET in Washington, DC, for a keynote speech from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on how far our antimonopoly movement has come and the fights that lay ahead to rebuild our democracy. Watch live or catch the replay!
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/tomorrow-renewing-the-democratic-republic

Are you fed up with the state of concert tickets? We drafted this testimony for the record in the recent Senate Judiciary hearing on Livenation & Ticketmaster, filed jointly with our allies at A2IM, Artist Rights Alliance Music Workers Alliance Union of Musicians and Allied Workers.

Joint Statement on Ticketmaster/Live Nation — Future of Music Coalition Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hosting a hearing on the topic of “Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment.” The following groups and associations comprising diverse musicians and independent record labels have submitted the below statement for the record. I...

"Think of the indie music movement of the 1990s as an anti-monopoly moment,” said Kevin Erickson, director of the Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group for musicians. “We’re seeing now the limitations of that approach. In 1996, you could put out your own record and go around major labels, put it in stores, have a little mail-order business. You can’t go around Spotify. The dominant businesses have too much market power.”

Islands in the Stream Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.

Too few companies have too much power. Antitrust is one of the best tools in the toolbox to remedy this problem.

Big Music Needs to Be Broken Up to Save the Industry A year without live music has been a disaster. So has corporate power in streaming, recording, and ticketing. Antitrust may be the only solution.

Here’s the annual budget for the National Endowment for the arts plotted alongside the budgets for Mission: Impossible films.

On Monday, we're cohosting this webinar with Congressman Adam Schiff, hosted by actor David Dastmalchian with live performances by Aloe Blacc and Darrell Aquino! It's a chance to learn about the new COVID unemployment benefit for mixed earners, which includes lots of musicians, songwriters and industry workers. RSVP today, and help us push for these crucial benefits to be extended and expanded.

Rep. Adam Schiff in Conversation: Unemployment Benefit for Mixed Earners Congressman Adam Schiff & Unemployed Entrepreneurs, Gig Workers & Freelancers Discuss MEUC Benefit & Advocate for More COVID Relief.

When so many musicians have lost all of their work, $100/week isn't enough to make up the difference.

Tell Congress to Extend and Expand COVID Unemployment Help — Mixed Earners Mixed earners-- people who earn both W2 wages and self-employment income--have missed out on thousands of dollars in unemployment aid. A new program offers them $100/week in additional benefit, but it needs to be extended and expanded.

CNBC reports on the new unemployment benefit heading to mixed-income workers, and highlights our efforts to acheive, promote, and expand these benefits.

States prepare to pay $100 unemployment boost to mixed earners, but delays are expected Here's who's eligible for the new Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation benefit.

Great news for unemployed musicians and others who typically earn both W2 and self-employment income: you may be entitled to an additional $100/month. Get the details at http://mixedincome.org

mixedincome.org The Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation benefit is designed to provide financial assistance to gig workers, freelancers, and other self-employed individuals who've been shut out of some of their unemployment benefits

Voting is a crucially important way that we can work toward a future for music that's centered on music creators and communities.
If you've voted, you're eligible to watch the IVoted Festival today, and FMC is presenting a stage! It's an incredible, diverse lineup, and a good way to soundtrack your GOTV textbanking or just avoid anxious scrolling until the returns come in.
check it out at http://ivotedfestival.com

Will I Heart Radio be the new Shake Shack?

Restaurant Chains Took Loans Meant for Small Businesses. Will Radio Conglomerates Do the Same? Watchdog groups fear that language in a new stimulus bill could allow individual stations owned by large companies to “masquerade” as small businesses — and take all the money

We're working to document and understand the problems musicians have experienced in getting federal support through states' systems so we can tell Congress what to fix.

Delays in Aid for Freelance Musicians Highlights Systemic Inequalities For self-employed musicians -- many of whom had their incomes wiped out by the shutdown -- the situation is particularly distressing.

Here's the latest info on which states have made unemployment assistance available to self-employed workers (including musicians). Check out our FAQ for the full details. https://medium.com/future-of-music-coalition-presents-futurelabs/faq-music-workers-accessing-government-support-relief-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-199db3149a60

Glad to see that the US Copyright Office cited FMC's comments in three of its new Notices of Proposed Rulemaking. These rulemakings are the way the Office integrates public comments as it works to implement the Music Modernization Act--and get songwriters and composers paid.

We put together an FAQ on different kinds of govt support available to musicians in response to COVID-19. Agencies are still rolling out guidelines, so there's a lot we still don't know, but tell us what questions you have and we'll try to answer 'em.

FAQ: Music workers accessing government support & relief during the Coronavirus pandemic Musicians, songwriters, producers, sound engineers, and other music industry workers have been hit especially hard by the Coronavirus…

Musicians were the original gig workers, before that term was part of our collective vocabulary.

Why We Need Local Musicians - Why They Need Us - The Playlist For Carolina Quarantine Dealing with the COVID-19 crisis means coping with feelings of fear, confusion and sadness. For musicians, it also means financial precarity as venues and

Music workers need immediate financial relief, and we’re glad to see companies supporting organizations like Musicares. But the support must not stop there.

Should Music's Biggest Companies Be Doing More to Help Right Now? Spotify, Amazon, Warner Music Group, and other major music companies are donating to coronavirus relief — but the acts pale in comparison to more meaningful measures elsewhere in the industry

The structure of musicians’ employment means that they (and other gig workers) may be especially impacted by coronavirus-related closures.

Musicians Were Depending On Those Jazz Nights And Senior Living Gigs As organizations close their doors, COVID-19 cancellations are taking their toll on independent artists, who don't know where their next paycheck will come from.