Updates on Ticketing, Protected Species, NEA Grants and More

May 17, 2024

In This Issue

• Fixing Ticketing: Your Continued Advocacy is Needed
• New! Essential Tips for Travel with Musical Instruments
• Latest NEA Grant Awards and Opportunities
• Artificial Intelligence Policy Roadmap Released in Senate
• New Overtime Rules and Resources

Fixing Ticketing: Your Continued Advocacy Needed!

Recent Symphony coverage of orchestras battling ticket scams lays out the urgent need for policy action. The League is partnering with the wider live events sector to support S. 3457, the Fans First Act, a bipartisan Senate bill that would create new policies for ticket sales on both the primary and secondary markets. The House just this week passed H.R. 3950, the TICKET Act, by a vote of 388-24. With this successful passage, the League, in partnerships with the Fix the Tix coalition, is urging the Senate to take up S. 3457, which has the strongest ticketing protections (see a helpful side-by-side here). Your orchestra can speak up today by contacting Congress to express support for immediate policy action. Thank you to the many orchestras that have already responded to requests by the League’s D.C. advocacy team for outreach to key Senate offices. Learn more about this rapidly-developing topic in the League’s Ticketing Policy Overview. 

New! Essential Tips for Travel with Musical Instruments

Last week, the League hosted a free webinar, Travel Rules for Protected Species and Musical Instruments in partnership with national music stakeholders. The webinar featured speakers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to explain rules for international travel with musical instruments that contain protected species material. The resource page includes the archived recording, a transcript, and pdf of slides – all are publicly available without a login required.

This webinar is designed to be an ongoing resource for use over time and the public is encouraged to share it broadly with friends, colleagues, and anyone in the music sector who anticipates future travel with a musical instrument. Learn more about how the music sector can support conservation efforts in the League’s Protected Species Resources and Know Your Bow campaign.

Latest NEA Grant Awards and Opportunities

With this week’s announcement of Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) Round Two funding, the National Endowment for the Arts completed its major grantmaking for the current fiscal year. The 45 direct grants to orchestras in this round, combined with the first round of GAP and Challenge America grants announced in January, add up to 97 grants to orchestras through these major categories in FY2024, totaling $2,616,100. Awarded projects include presenting concerts and festivals, state-wide touring, emerging as well as familiar works, artist residencies, community engagement and education programs, and programs for young musicians. In addition to direct grants to orchestras, countless awards were also issued to support related orchestral- and instrument training program projects. The League featured many orchestra grantees from last year in our written testimony to Congress urging robust funding for the Endowment.

The next opportunity to apply for FY25 NEA funding is for the second round of Grants for Arts Projects, with a deadline of July 11, 2024. The deadlines for FY25 GAP Round 1 and Challenge America have already passed. Be sure to review the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects guidelines and Challenge America guidelines on its website, which are updated every year. The League offers guidance specific to orchestras on our Tips for your application page.

Artificial Intelligence Policy Roadmap Released in Senate

As the creative sector continues to raise the implications of artificial intelligence (AI), a bipartisan Senate working group released a set of recommendations this week intended to spark federal policy action. The report, Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence, is accompanied by a one-page summary and recommends consideration of transparency requirements for copyrighted data used by AI developers; protections against unauthorized use of names, likeness, and voice; and, the impact of AI on copyright and intellectual property law. The Human Artistry Campaign, in which the League is a partner, is applauding the report for supporting potential efforts to safeguard the work of creative professionals.

New Overtime Rules and Resources

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) announced the final rules for new overtime compensation requirements on April 23, 2024. As an active member of the National Council of Nonprofits and Independent Sector, the League has been partnering with the wider nonprofit sector to bring visibility to the new rules as initially proposed, request a phased-in approach to new requirements, and share information about the final policies.

Please see the League’s updated guide to Overtime Policy Developments and Resources. We share direct links to the DoL guidance, as well as a helpful analysis from the National Council of Nonprofits and Independent Sector’s May 8th webinar for nonprofits.