To the delight of the recording industry, a congressional hearing about a bill that would decrease the royalties that Pandora pays to record labels and artists turned into a larger discussion about how Congress regulates the music business.

The hearing, on the Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property subcommittee, was about the Internet Radio Freedom Act, a bill sponsored by panel member Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, that would subject Internet radio services to the same rate setting standard of cable and satellite radio.

MORE: Check out the archive of Sunlight Live's coverage of the hearing.

In a press release issued after ...

The fiscal cliff might be getting all the headlines, but another battle is brewing in Congress, pitting the recording industry, a traditional source of Washington power, against Internet firms using an upstart technology.

But in a departure from last year's struggle over the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA, which favored entrenched media firms like Walt Disney and Time Warner while drawing opposition from technology firms like Google and Reddit, this time the bill at the center of the controversy favors the upstarts. The Internet Radio Fairness Act would lower the royalty fees that sites like Pandora pay out to recording companies and artists.