FAIR Act Proponents Are Sabotaging California’s Music Community Behind Closed Doors (Guest Column)
variety.comMike Montgomery A piece of legislation known as the Free Artists from Industry Restrictions (FAIR) Act has long divided the music industry in California, with powerful forces on both sides taking positions.
If enacted, FAIR would undo a 35-year-old amendment to the state’s historic “seven-year statute” and effectively remove the power of record labels to sue artists for damages if they exit their contracts after seven years without having turned in the number of albums specified in their contracts.
Once left for dead in the California Assembly, the FAIR Act (now known as AB 983) has now been newly taken up in the Senate in a back-door fashion known as “gut-and-amend.” Mike Montgomery is the executive director of CALinnovates, a nonpartisan technology advocacy coalition.
He weighs in for Variety on what he sees as the looming danger of the revived legislation: For the last two years, a small group of wealthy music managers and lawyers have been trying to advance a bill in Sacramento that would change the rules for recording agreements to benefit elite stars and their representatives while driving down advance payments and royalties for everyone else and making it harder for diverse new voices to get signed.The first version of this proposal failed to receive a hearing or a vote and it died at the end of 2021.
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