Kiss Frontman Gene Simmons Addresses the White House About American Music Fairness Act

Of all the ridiculous people that have found themselves in the White House lately, Kiss vocalist and bassist Gene Simmons is honestly the most normal and non-threatening, if we’re being honest. Especially since Simmons was there yesterday, December 5, crashing the briefing room to talk about the American Music Fairness Act, among other things, including his receiving of the Kennedy Center Honors Award tomorrow (Sunday, December 7).

Simmons is set to meet with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, December 9, to discuss the bipartisan bill, which aims to make sure artists are paid by radios stations every time their music is played.

Simmons said the following at the White House, as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net:

“[On Tuesday] I’ll be pointing my finger at both Republicans and Democrats or senators who are joining to hear me talk about the American Music Fairness Act that needs to be passed because your favorite artists — Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and quite a few others — were never paid a single cent when you heard their voices on the radio. Nothing. They were never paid for their performance on the radio, even though radio yearly was making almost 14 billion dollars.

“In America, if you work hard, you should get paid,” he continued. “But that is a fact that’s been around for forever, and sadly this injustice has been ongoing without anybody paying attention to it. It doesn’t affect us as much ’cause we make a living. But our kids, [my son] Nick and [my daughter] Sophie, are both successful artists, and we, as guardians of their future, are not going to allow this injustice to continue.

“If there’s an artist who’s heard on radio, they should get paid, because the radio stations use our name, our likeness to promote their radio stations on billboards, everywhere else, and they charge advertisers money and they’re making 14 billion — that’s with a ‘B’ — dollars annually, multiplied by, if you have a 50-year career, that’s a lot of money. Can the artists that we all admire — from Sinatra to Elvis — have a little bit of that? Would that be okay?

“So this is a bipartisan bill that will get passed because the president is very pro artists.

“America invented the music of the world in the first place,” Simmons added. “Rock and roll, blues, jazz, most of it from black music, of course, and country and western, hip-hop was invented right here, and we’re letting our artists, the voices of America, American culture, get by working hard on their craft and not getting paid.”

President and CEO of SoundExchange, Michael Huppe, will be joining Simmons Tuesday for his meeting with the Senate. SoundExchange is a nonprofit specifically designated by Congress to dish out digital streaming royalties to artists.

Apparently, AM/FM radio is the only major music platform left in the States that refuses to compensate recording artists, seeing them join North Korea, Cuba, and Iran in their withholding (even Russia and China pay royalties, which is saying a lot).

What the hell, United States? You’re doing a lot of shitty things, so this is the very least you can currently do that’s a bit of good.