Music professionals are lobbying the US Congress to mandate that Apple and other online music providers should pay them a performance fee for downloading music, movies, TV shows and even the 30-second song previews.

Music composers and publishers wants to add performance fee to every from Apple iTunes, Amazon and the like to the present revenue they collect from the licensing fee from all content.

Speaking on the issue, Universal Music Publishing Group's CEO, David Renzer, said, "In the US, while we do get paid a mechanical [licensing fee] from ITunes, we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet."

Actually, iTunes allows an individual to listen to a short clip from a song before choosing to purchase it. Music professionals argue that these samples count as public performances. Hense, Apple owes the right holder a royalty payment every time an individual listens to these previews.