Fair Trade Music International

Founded in 2014, Fair Trade Music International is an independent, not-for-profit organization backed by more than 500,000 music creators from around the world. Led by an international board, we combine global networking, education and awareness initiatives to promote the emergence of an ethical, sustainable and transparent music ecosystem.

We aim to help people to make ethical choices when producing, distributing, streaming or purchasing music. Our objective is a modern digital music economy that incentivizes creativity, increases access to new music and is equitable for everyone in the music value chain.

The Fair Trade Music movement counts many of the world’s largest music authors’ societies among its supporters. We are also part of the International Council of Music Creators’ CIAM partner alliance of songwriter and composer organizations.

Our campaigns

The Fair Trade Music movement is focused on a number of issues that are facing the world’s music creators. We are working to raise awareness while providing essential knowledge, research recommendations and technical context. Our hope is that these resources might help songwriters and composers understand, avoid and if necessary, address similar issues.

Start with copyright 101 or dive directly into an area of interest below.

Unmatched royalties
Creators deserve timely, accurate payment. Somewhere in the U.S. right now is a growing bank account currently containing more than $400 million. This money belongs to songwriters from all over…
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Equitable streaming
Ethical, transparent and sustainable. Every year, music becomes easier to discover and listen to. This is great news for music lovers and even better news for songwriters and composers who…
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FTMI Generative AI White Paper
Generative AI
New remuneration right could solve legal and ethical challenges of generative AI for music creators Music creators love technology that helps them to create music. But when these tools rely…
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Buyouts
Negotiating away future earnings. In recent years, we are seeing a trend among production companies, digital music distributors and other music users to acquire full ownership and control over musical…
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Freedom to create
A fundamental human right. As one of the purest forms of human expression, music has historically been an engine of positive social change. The freedom to write and perform music…
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Mechanical royalty rate
A constantly eroding source of income. The rate at which songwriters are remunerated for US mechanical royalties has traditionally been set at a fixed number of US cents per composition.…
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