SAG-AFTRA On Protecting Emerging Artists

Chappell Roan has ignited a firestorm after she called out record labels for not doing enough to support their artists, especially burgeoning ones, during her speech at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.

While accepting the gramophone for Best New Artist, Roan spoke about her own experience having to move back home and start from scratch after five years as a recording artist when she was dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020.

“I told myself if I ever won a Grammy, and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry, profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists,” she said.

Since then, think pieces have popped up across the internet about the validity of Roan’s call to action. Music executives are pushing back on the corporate greed narrative, insisting it’s just business. Other artists, like Halsey, are backing Roan.

Amid the online chatter, many questions have arisen about a potential solution: What responsibility do record labels have to providing health insurance to artists? Isn’t it the union’s job to sort that out? Couldn’t artists use their advances to pay for their own health insurance? Does it even matter whose responsibility it is when it’s clear by the standing ovation she received that plenty of other artists have felt just as unsupported as she has?

It is true recording artists signed to major labels have health insurance options available to them through a deal the labels have signed with SAG-AFTRA, called the National Code of Fair Practice for Sound Recordings. In essence, it works the same way the union’s health insurance plans do for other members, where artists must earn a minimum amount annually to be eligible (in this case, $27,540).

However, artists who are on a label’s roster do have an exception for years where their income might not meet the eligibility requirement, which is a common issue that recording artists face, explains SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.

“The way those deals are structured, they may get a big advance in year one and then be recouping against that advance in years two and three. So they may have no earnings that are on record in years two and three, because it’s all being recouped against that initial advance,” he told Deadline on Thursday. “So with that in mind … if they are active artists on label roster and they don’t meet the eligibility requirement, then the label makes a special payment to guarantee their coverage for the succeeding year.”

So, what happens if, like Roan, an artist is dropped from their label? This is where things get a bit more complicated, since SAG-AFTRA’s health insurance eligibility periods are rolling.

Hypothetically, an artist could continue to receive health insurance benefits for an entire year or more after being dropped if they’ve already met the required income. For example, if an artist with calendar-year eligibility was dropped by their label on January 1 but had already met the income threshold, they would remain covered until March of the following year.

A smaller artist like Roan was just a few years ago is unlikely to be in that position, though, especially in years where their label is recouping an advance.

Additionally, as Crabtree-Ireland points out, not all record labels are signatories of this SAG-AFTRA deal, meaning many artists are not eligible at all.

“When people criticize the major labels for this, I think in the fairness, we have to acknowledge that the major labels do have unionized contracts, and they do, through those union contracts, provide benefits that are not necessarily provided by other labels that aren’t signatories,” he said.

Crabtree-Ireland also concedes that “the world of recording artists can be more isolating,” and often it is difficult for emerging artists to identify the resources available to them or understand the complexities of their contracts that inhibit them from having access to said resources.

“A lot of emerging artists end up on non-union labels, or they end up in scenarios where they have a non-union label representing them that then has a distribution deal with the major labels. So it looks as though they have a major label deal, but in actuality, they don’t, and that leads to gaps in the kinds of basic actions, including health plan and retirement, that they deserve to have,” he explained.

Filling in those gaps is crucial because “a lot of the traditional employee protections aren’t in place for artists in this industry,” Crabtree-Ireland adds.

This is not a new conversation, and Roan is not the first artist to speak on the class divide in the music industry. While the industry often gets reduced to its most successful names from Taylor Swift to Jay-Z, most musicians are working-class people, and even winning a Grammy doesn’t guarantee an artist is or ever will be wealthy.

Speaking with Deadline, Crabtree-Ireland commended Roan for using her speech to advocate for artist protections, adding that he hopes to work with the “Pink Pony Club” singer to spread awareness about both the resources currently available to artists as well as the gaps in protections that need to be addressed.

“I thought her remarks were very courageous,” he said. “The fact that [artists are] so passionate about their art and their careers means that it’s easy to take advantage of them, and that’s one of the reasons why unions have always been so important in this industry.”