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Major reform to music copyright law passes the Senate

On Tuesday, the Senate approved the Music Modernization Act. The Act is the first major reform to copyright laws since before streaming services existed.

It's a big step forward in the music industry and Tennessee Senator, Lamar Alexander, played a big role in making it happen.

On Tuesday, the Senate approved the Music Modernization Act. The Act is the first major reform to copyright laws since before streaming services existed.

"It's the most important piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure songwriters in this country are paid a fair market value for their work," Senator Alexander said.

The bill aims to clean up what some in people in the business call a "muddy industry," meaning it's not easy and sometimes it's impossible to figure out who played what role in creating songs leading to people not getting paid.

"There's hundreds of thousands of songs that are not being paid for right now," Joe Vangieri, CEO of Knoxville recording studio, Digitrax, said.

Vangieri said Tennessee is a state loaded with songwriters and this new bill will help those people get what they're owed.

"Transparency is a good first step to truth," he said.

"I wrote my first song when I was 6 years old," David Grimes, the Marketing Director for Digitrax said.

David Grimes is a songwriter and said the last time congress approached copyright law was the late 90's, years before iTunes existed. He said this bill has been a long time coming.

"It's difficult to pay the right people the right amount of money right now because there's not a database we can go to and see that this person owns this song and say this person deserves their fair share," Grimes said.

This bill has to be reconsidered by the house and then ultimately signed by president Trump.

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