US Music Coalition Wants Trade Reps to Kill an EU Copyright Plan It Calls a $300M Tax on American Artists

If you are an American artist who earns money when your recordings get played in Europe, a fight is unfolding in Brussels that could quietly shrink your income. Not through a bad streaming deal or a chart glitch, but through a change to how European countries decide who deserves to be paid at all.

The number being floated is big enough to get your attention: nearly $300 million a year in royalties that currently flow from Europe to US creators, now at risk.

That figure comes from a coalition of American music organizations that has asked the United States Trade Representative to oppose a proposal under review by the European Commission. The coalition made its case in a letter sent to the USTR on July 8, as Music Business Worldwide reported.

The signatories read like a roll call of the US industry. SoundExchange, The Recording Academy, ASCAP, BMI, SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Association of Independent Music, the Artist Rights Alliance, the Future of Music Coalition, Music Managers Forum-US and several others all put their names to it, per MBW.

What the fight is actually about

Here is the mechanic that matters. Right now, most of Europe operates on what is called "national treatment." That means a country treats foreign artists no worse than its own when it comes to paying performance royalties. An American recording played on European radio or in a European venue earns the same way a domestic one would.

That protection was cemented by a 2020 ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, known as the RAAP decision, which MBW notes extended national-treatment protections to American recording artists and labels. The court held that EU member states could not deny performance royalties to non-EU performers just because the US does not offer a mirror-image right back home.

The EU proposal now on the table would reverse that. It would swap national treatment for a "material reciprocity" framework. In plain terms: Europe would only pay American artists to the extent US law pays European artists the same way. And US law does not, at least not on terrestrial radio.

Why the coalition is alarmed

The coalition argues this would "codify discrimination" against US creators and cut the royalties they currently collect. It pointed out that 21 of the EU's 27 member states presently provide national treatment and pay American rights-holders, according to MBW.

"National treatment has long been a cornerstone of the global copyright system, ensuring American creators, including recording artists, musicians, and performers, are treated no less favorably than domestic rightsholders abroad."

Beyond the headline dollar figure, the coalition warned of practical damage: reduced or withheld payments, heavier administrative burdens, and eligibility decisions that could become politically driven rather than rules-based. The letter also cautioned that other countries could follow Europe's lead, eroding the principle of nondiscrimination in global copyright, as MBW reported.

This is the part worth sitting with. Copyright disputes over cross-border royalties are usually treated as legal or cultural questions. The coalition is deliberately reframing this one as trade policy, dropping it on the USTR's desk at a moment when US-EU tensions are already elevated. That is a strategic choice, and a shrewd one.

The honest counterargument

To be fair, Europe's side has a point that is easy to understand. European trade groups have argued that keeping national treatment means money leaving Europe for the US with nothing coming back. Indie-label body IMPALA previously estimated the loss at around €125 million (about $137 million) a year in recorded-music royalties transferring to US rights-holders if the law stays as it is, per MBW.

From a European desk, that looks like a one-way transfer. American recordings dominate their airwaves and playlists, European artists collect little to nothing on US radio, and the RAAP ruling locked in the imbalance. "Free money is free money" cuts both ways: what feels like fairness to a US artist feels like a subsidy to a European one.

The fix the coalition is pointing to

The coalition's response to that criticism is to point at the obvious hole in US law. It flagged the American Music Fairness Act (H.R. 861 / S. 326) as the real path forward, according to MBW.

The bill, authored by Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Marsha Blackburn, would force AM/FM radio corporations to pay artists for the music they play, the same way Spotify, Apple Music, SiriusXM and Pandora already do. Blackburn reintroduced it in January 2025 with the line that the US is "the only democratic country in the world in which artists are not paid for the use of their music on AM and FM radio," MBW noted.

That is the tell. The cleanest way to protect that $300 million abroad is to stop giving Europe a reason to complain at home. Pay performers on US radio, and material reciprocity stops being a threat.

For now, the coalition is fighting a defensive war in Brussels while the offensive fix sits stalled in Congress. The uncomfortable truth is that America's best argument against being taxed by Europe is one it has refused to make for decades.

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Sources

• Music Business Worldwide