[From Vox.com]

President Trump’s signing of the Music Modernization Act on Thursday, October 11, 2018 was driven by the need to update and streamline music licensing processes for the streaming era, where more and more musicians are finding it difficult to collect the royalties owed to them from streams on Spotify and other platforms. It has become the most significant copyright law change in decades.

The bill received unanimous support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers in its passage of the Senate and House. Its passage has been awaited by the music industry for several years, stretching back to the Obama administration.

The bill accomplishes three main tasks:

• It streamlines the process by which music rights holders can be paid for their songs being played on streaming services.
• It includes a song’s producers in payment for when songs are played over satellite and online radio, the first time producers have ever been mentioned in a bill of this sort.
• It allows for payment of royalties for songs written before 1972, to both songwriters and performers.

Read the Music Modernization Act for yourself: https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/amendments.pdf