There is a lot going on in Washington D.C. Between conflicts in the Middle East, rising inflation and other hot button issues, it could be understandable if music industry issues fall lower on the priority list for politicians these days.
However, no matter what is going on in the nation’s capitol, it’s the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier‘s mission to get the D.C. power players to pay attention to causes related to the recorded music industry, and he tells Billboard it’s actually not as hard as one might believe. “Everyone loves music,” Glazier says with a smile and a shrug.
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To build rapport, Glazier is known to ask members of Congress about the song they danced to at their weddings, tugging on the emotional heartstrings of both Republicans and Democrats alike, before launching into RIAA talking points about strengthening copyright protection and safeguarding against AI deepfake impersonation.
His biggest push right now is the NO FAKES Act, a bill guarding against unauthorized deepfakes, that’s been reintroduced to the House and Senate for several years in the row, each time adding in new supporters, ranging from Google and OpenAI to SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Association.
Last week, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) took the bill to the senate floor for a vote, and while it received nearly universal support, it was thwarted by one dissenter, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who expressed concern that the bill did not have sufficient exceptions for the use of one’s image in satire or political commentary.
With the midterm election — and the holidays — fast approaching, it is looking like the bill may need to go through another round of reintroduction in 2027. Still, as Glazier puts it, he’s “an optimistic person,” and he believes there’s still a possibility that the bill could get unanimous support during the lame duck period and slip through in the final moments of 2026. “This is one that has such broad support, both from a coalition basis and from members of Congress — House, Senate, Republican, Democrat — that if we can work out a couple of these last issues, I think it has a real shot at what we call unanimous consent,” he says.
To talk through the upcoming election, Trump’s second term and coalition building for music rights on Capitol Hill, Glazier joins the latest episode of Billboard On the Record.
To watch this episode of Billboard On the Record, check out the YouTube video below or click here for more viewing and listening options. An edited and condensed excerpt of the conversation can also be found below.
Since you have your feet in both words, how would you compare D.C. and Hollywood?
There are a lot of similarities. D.C. is all about a brand around a person, right? And an artist is all about a brand around a person. They all have teams, and it’s not like you’re working for, you know, Coca-Cola, the corporation. You’re working for this senator. You’re working for this congressman. It’s about them, their views — what they want to put out to the world. And your job is to make sure that what they want to get out there, they get out there successfully, and then you try to help with the reaction to what they put out there. Also, the fact that politics and entertainment and music are dinner table topics — everybody is interested in that. Families fight over these two subjects at Thanksgiving.
The stakes are a little bit different, I will say.
Depends on the family!
With everything going on in D.C., there are a ton of hot-button issues that are very important right now. Is it difficult to get people to pay attention to music-related issues?
It’s not, because we’re music and everybody loves music. I mean, the first thing I ask any person who’s elected to Congress is, “What was the song that you danced to at your wedding?” Only music can bring you back immediately to something in your life that’s incredibly important. And when they think about it and they answer, you’re like, “Music’s important, and it needs to be protected.” Then, I run into how the Constitution actually gives them the job to do, and that they’re bound to do it under law, and that they have to secure rights, and I go through the whole thing. But we always start with music. That is our secret weapon because this industry is small with a huge impact on American culture. We don’t have the revenues that AI companies have, tech companies have, even that other entertainment industries have. Still, I would argue that we are the most impactful industry with the least amount of revenue.
Do you find that you guys have more success advocating for these issues with folks who consider themselves to be Republicans or Democrats?
Unlike many other industries, it does not break down by party. Music is a very bipartisan issue. I would say that there are arguments that you might lean on more or less, depending on the audience. So, for example, a lot of Republicans support the music industry because they believe in property rights, and they want to make sure that this constitutionally given property right is protected. It’s also individual freedom and the ability to sort of negotiate freely with property that you have, and free speech issues. And then on the Democratic side, although they also very much care about those issues, they also care about workers’ issues, and now the Republican side also cares about those issues, so it’s very bipartisan. We might emphasize one thing more than another, but for the most part, it breaks down a little bit more by geography than it does by party.
As politics has gotten more divided and more extreme, how has that affected the way that you have to go after and convince these politicians to pay attention to these issues.
So weirdly, it brings them together. At the end of the day, they are human beings. They actually do crave working together, even though it’s seemingly more impossible these days. So when we have a hearing on music, it’s almost like this big sigh of relief. The members come; they’re nice to each other. They care about it. They defer to each other. It’s almost like they’ve been dying to actually be normal and nice to each other, and we present that opportunity for them. Also, almost every event that we do is bipartisan. So we bring them together with music and help them get to know each other and their families and their friends. Music brings out the humanity in people
How would you compare working with the Trump administration in his second term versus his first?
I would say that generally, this administration stems from the top. It’s unlike the George W. Bush administration, which was sort of more bottom-up. Also, the president loves music — absolutely loves music.
He does?
He takes out his Spotify playlist. He shows people: “What do you think?” He listens, but they don’t publish his playlist. [Former President] Obama published his playlist, so we got to see more from him, but anecdotally, from folks who have been with [Trump], he’s like showing people songs a lot of times. I think it’s something that was pushed to him in an algorithm he listened to. He’s like, “Hey, have you heard this?“ It’s more like a discovery thing.
I mean, I know everyone loves music. It’s just odd to think of Trump having a personal life.
I love the fact that [former President] Biden and Trump and Obama have nothing in common, really…but all three of them love music.
When I talk to people about generative AI, sometimes they’ll say, “Generative AI is music’s next Napster moment.” I’m wondering how you think about that comparison? Is that a fair assessment?
I don’t. I think it’s the opposite. First of all, I would say with Napster, we were fighting against the people. For fans it was like, you know, “Oh, this is so great. I’m receiving this free stuff.” When we were unable to act against the companies, it kind of forced to act against the people. I think that we were put in this terrible situation where it was the industry versus fans. That’s not where you want to be.
AI’s the complete opposite. The fans, the people, they’re with us. They are very hesitant about and leery of AI replacing the human element that makes music what it is, that gives music its soul. That’s the magic that comes from life experiences. People don’t want to lose that. This idea of music generators sort of taking human works and then running them through a machine and popping something out — it’s like popping out a body without a soul inside. I know people don’t want that, because we’ve done the focus groups and we’ve done the polls, and the numbers are, like, 92%.
Looking back at that time period with Napster, the RIAA was super active. As you alluded to, the RIAA did go after music fans using Napster as a way to try to quell digital piracy. Now that we’re over 20 years post-Napster, I often hear music executives wanting to distance themselves from that period. As you’ve reflected on that time period, do you feel like the RIAA handled Napster the way they should have?
We were sort of forced into it in a succession of lawsuits. But originally there was no suing of consumers. It was what we called a pre-litigation settlement letter, and we basically sent a letter saying, “Hey, you’re stealing a bunch of stuff. It’s not legal. We won’t sue you if you want to settle this. And how about we settle it for —“ And it was a fairly nominal amount. Enough to basically say this is wrong and to create a deterrent, but not to get to the level of lawsuits. But the [internet service providers] decided that they wanted to stop giving us the names of people before lawsuits could be filed.
So, we had to go to court, and we said, “Look, we think that we should get the names ahead of time.” The court said, “Nope, you can’t get the names ahead of time. The only way to enforce your right is going to be to file a lawsuit against John Doe.” Instead of sending a letter and trying to work it out ahead of time, you start walking down this path, and now you’re forced to sue John Doe. Well, John Doe could be a 12-year-old kid who happened to have their name on the account, or a dead person… And so you end up in all these embarrassing situations, and they all become stories.
We were a little bit forced into it…I try to forget this part myself, but [people must remember that] we lost half the industry. We went from six majors to three majors. We lost 50% of our revenue. I think, at the time, desperate times called for desperate measures, and people were desperately trying to create the record that this was illegal, knowing one day we probably would end up in the Supreme Court. So it ended up well in the Supreme Court.
I hope that the industry never gets into a shape again where it ever sues users, but it was also true in Washington that the big line for all these trade associations that represent tech companies is, “You should go after the wrongdoer, not the provider.” In other words, don’t go after the company that has tons of capital investment; you should go after the kid who uploaded it.
Can you just tell me a little bit more about NO FAKES? The bill refers to “digital replicas” which I think many listeners might not understand.
So the definition is pretty narrow, actually, but the definition is a highly realistic, computer-generated replica of your voice or your likeness. In other words, a clone, right? So it’s — I’m cloning your voice or I’m cloning your likeness to use it in a way that you didn’t consent. It’s not a meme. It’s not, like, The Onion. It’s not a picture. It’s not something on Saturday Night Live. It is really about AI cloning.
The RIAA has been working on NO FAKES Act for a while now. It was first introduced as a draft bill in 2023, then it was formally introduced in 2024, reintroduced in 2025…
Welcome to Congress! [laughs]
Now, we’re in 2026, and we’re close to the midterms now, and then the holidays, and then we’re into 2027, when you’d have to reintroduce it again. I’m wondering what you think the timeline is, realistically, for this getting passed?
We have a shot in the lame duck [period], a real shot. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the election, obviously, and nobody knows what’s going to happen in that time period between the election and the new Congress. But this is one that has such broad support, both from a coalition basis and from members of Congress — House, Senate, Republican, Democrat — that if we can work out a couple of these last issues, I think it has a real shot at what we call unanimous consent. And that is somebody literally saying, “Hey, if nobody opposes this, I think we should just pass it.” And if nobody objects, then it can pass. So whether there’s, like, a vehicle that it could be attached to, we really don’t know. But I do think that we’ve got a shot in this Congress to get this done, just based on the support. But I’m an optimistic person.
More likely, it goes into the next Congress. It’ll have to be reintroduced in both the House and the Senate. But this is where we are so fortunate that our issues are completely bipartisan. It doesn’t matter if the House changes or the Senate changes, or they both stay the same, or they both change; this bill will be on a trajectory for quick introduction and quick movement, because it’s not the process.
Why do you think it’s taken so long for NO FAKES to get through so far?
Coalition building. We started out with us and the unions and the artist groups together, and then we broadened out to the motion picture industry, which is hard because they use a lot of AI in a lot of different ways for making motion pictures. Then, we broadened it out to YouTube and the streaming platforms, which took a long time, because the obligation is on them to take these digital replicas down when they get a notice that says, “Hey, that’s my face and that’s my voice, and I didn’t say that that was OK.” We had to make sure that it could be practical, that it wasn’t too laborious… Then, we had to broaden that out to the AI companies. We basically went to OpenAI and said, “You know, this is one bill that you should be for”… And to their credit, on this bill, they agreed.
Then, we went to the Trump administration, and we talked to all [of his people] about it, and the Trump administration ended up supporting it, and they put in a national legislative policy framework their support for the NO FAKES Act. You just have to keep building your coalition over time until you get to the point where you might have a single issue or one objector, and you’re never going to get anybody. It takes years to accomplish this.
What elections do you think are critical for music this November?
So we’re losing Sen. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, because she’s running for governor, and she’s likely to become governor in Tennessee. So if she becomes governor, she will name her replacement, who then will have to run for that seat later. That’s a very important one. We obviously pay great attention to what’s happening in what we call our “home states.” What’s happening in Florida and Texas and New York, California, Tennessee? But for us, we also have to pay attention to who’s going to be in charge of the committees that handle all of our topics.