[This series first appeared in the Huffington Post on July 26, 2013–lets see how I did now that music is all modern and chrome.]

In this and future posts, I will be addressing five things the Congress could do for music creators that are easy to do and that would help develop an online market for music. First up is a slightly esoteric, but important area: royalties paid by companies like SiriusXM for sound recordings made before 1972.

Many of us in the music business know that songwriters and recording artists are financially worse off under the “new boss” than they were under the “old boss.” We have watched older artists “die on the bandstand” because the royalty or residual income they had counted on to support them in their retirement began evaporating with the arrival of the Internet in their lives. We have watched younger artists and songwriters essentially…