Speaking at a musicFIRST press conference on April 27, American Federation of Musicians President Tom Lee shared his thoughts on passing the Performance Rights Act.

"Radio is a $20 Billion business. $16 billion of those dollars are attributable to the use of recorded progress. That is the music that our members and AFTRA create. So, when we go to the radio companies and say, can we have just a piece of that? Just a little compensation for the artists who created your $16 billion a year business, their answer is: You know, we understand and appreciate that, but that's not in our business model today."

"When somebody takes that intellectual property that we created and turns it into a $16 billion business, and says "thank you very much, but paying you a little bit of money is not in our business model", Our business model, we, the representatives of the performers and the artists, is not the same as theirs. Our business model is: we're going to create it, we're going to make it very valuable, and if you use it and you make money off of it, God bless you, but you're going to have to pay us for our creation of intellectual property."