Gene Simmons is receiving Kennedy Center Honors with KISS this Sunday, and is also bringing his voice to the fair pay for radio play campaign to pass the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA).
Gene will testify on AMFA next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He won’t just be speaking as a member of KISS or as one of the most recognizable performers in American music. He’ll be showing up as a witness to something far more universal: the decades-long exploitation of recording artists whose work powers an entire broadcast industry and that has never paid them a dime. Watch Gene’s hearing on December 9th at 3pm ET at this link, when Gene testifies alongside SoundExchange CEO Mike Huppe.
As Gene argued in his Washington Post op-ed, the AM/FM radio loophole is not a quirky relic, it is legalized taking. Everyone else pays for music: streaming services, satellite radio, social-media platforms, retail, fitness, gaming. Everyone except big broadcast radio, which generated more than $13 billion in advertising revenue last year while paying zero to the performers whose recordings attract those audiences.
Gene is testifying not just for legacy acts, but for the “thousands of present and future American recording artists” who, like KISS in the early days, were told to work hard, build a fan base, and just be grateful for airplay. As he might put it, artists were expected to “rock and roll all night” — but never expect to be paid for it on the radio.
And when artists asked for change, they were told to wait. They “keep on shoutin’,” decade after decade, but Congress never listened.
That’s why this hearing matters. It’s the first Senate-level engagement with the issue since 2009. The ground is shifting. Gene Simmons’ presence signals something bigger: artists are done pretending that “exposure” is a form of compensation.
AMFA would finally require AM/FM broadcasters to pay for the sound recordings they exploit, the same way every other democratic nation already does. It would give session musicians, backup vocalists, and countless independent artists a revenue stream they should have had all along. It would even unlock international royalties currently withheld from American performers because the U.S. refuses reciprocity.
And let’s be honest: Gene Simmons is an ideal messenger. He built KISS from nothing, understands the grind, and knows exactly how many hands touch a recording before it reaches the airwaves. His testimony exposes the truth: radio isn’t “free promotion” — it’s a commercial business built on someone else’s work.
Simmons once paraphrased the music economy as a game where artists are expected to give endlessly while massive corporations act like the only “god of thunder,” taking everything and returning nothing. AMFA is an overdue correction to that imbalance.
When Gene sits down before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he won’t be wearing the makeup. He won’t need to. He’ll be carrying something far more powerful: the voices of artists who’ve waited 80 years for Congress to finally turn the volume up on fairness.
The Trichordist 
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