Congress alone can ensure that we get paid for our work.
By Gene Simmons
July 14, 2026 5:27 pm ET
My mother brought me to America from Israel in 1958. We were proud legal immigrants, and I was blessed to have the opportunity to climb the ladder of success to become the bass player for KISS and a businessman. The American dream isn’t only alive, but alive and well. I’m living proof.
So pay attention, because the European Union is preparing to take away nearly $300 million a year from American artists, and the U.S. Congress is the only body on earth that can stop it.
When a song plays on AM or FM radio in Belgium, Germany, Spain or nearly any other developed country, both the songwriter and the performers get paid royalties. Only one major economy pays the performers nothing: the U.S., where Big Radio has built a multibillion-dollar industry on the backs of artists.
In 2020 the European Court of Justice ruled that radio stations in the EU had to start paying American performers. Since then, billions in European radio royalties have flowed back to U.S. musicians—not only household names, but backup singers and session musicians, too.
That money is now at risk. In May the European Commission opened a formal proceeding to undo it under the banner of “material reciprocity”—a fancy way of saying that if American broadcasters won’t pay artists, neither will European ones. If it becomes law, vital money will stop flowing to American artists.
But Europe is simply mirroring what U.S. radio giants like iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus have successfully lobbied Congress for. While U.S. broadcast stations have to pay for the use of the copyrighted composition—money that goes back to the songwriters and their publishers—they are exempt from having to pay royalties for the recording itself, money that would go to the performers and labels. The nonsensical argument is that playing the song is free advertising for the artists. Meantime, the stations pocket billions in ad revenue thanks to artists’ uncompensated work. This puts the U.S. in the company of North Korea, Cuba and Iran, which refuse to pay recording artists for radio plays.
Last December, I testified before Congress about the American Music Fairness Act, a bill supported by President Trump and written by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), that would require Big Radio to pay performance royalties while also protecting small local broadcasters, who would pay only a few hundred dollars each year to play unlimited music.
This week 50 of my fellow artists are joining me in a letter to Congress, asking them to answer Europe’s attempted clawback by passing the American Music Fairness Act and making Europe’s new proposal null and void. The bill is already bipartisan and bicameral. A congressional hearing has been held. It’s time for the judiciary committees to mark it up and send it to the floor.
To the chairmen of those committees, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Jim Jordan: What is taking so long? With Europe threatening to take away money that artists have earned, it’s time for Congress to stand up on behalf of American artists.
Mr. Simmons is a co-founder and bass player of KISS.
