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After Chappell Roan‘s best new artist acceptance speech Sunday (Feb. 2) at the Grammy Awards, in which she demanded working musicians receive healthcare from their labels and the rest of the record industry “profiting millions of dollars off of artists,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland approached the singer at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“I said, ‘Hi. You could help us get the word out, because we do provide health benefits — but not everybody knows that,’” says SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, who wore a navy-blue tuxedo, blue suede shoes, a black shirt and a pink bowtie to the event. “I gave her my contact information.”

Crabtree-Ireland, who attends the Grammys yearly as a leader of the union representing CBS broadcast employees, adds that all three major labels, plus Disney-owned music companies, pay into the SAG-AFTRA fund, making all signed artists eligible for its health insurance. Roan, reading from a notebook onstage, had said in her speech that after her previous label, Atlantic Records, dropped her during the pandemic, she struggled to find a job and affordable healthcare: “If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to,” she said. “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”

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After being dropped, Roan would have qualified for COBRA coverage, which is much more expensive, but might have helped during the leaner years before she rose to superstardom. (The SAG-AFTRA plan’s monthly premiums are $125; COBRA rates are $1,201.) Also, because Roan was younger than 26, she could have qualified to be part of her parents’ health insurance, or signed up for a plan under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

But music-business healthcare advocates, including Crabtree-Ireland, are not dismayed that Roan neglected to mention these details. “I was jumping on my couch when Chappell was giving her acceptance speech. I was like, ‘Gosh, thank you for bringing this up.’ The conversation was started,” says Tatum Allsep, founder/CEO of the Music Health Alliance, a 12-year-old Nashville group that provides healthcare information for artists. “What’s really important to know for all the young artists who are listening is you don’t have to go without if you are making a living within our industry.”

Still, the music business is not set up to cater to artists as employees, and Allsep is skeptical of the idea that major labels must provide healthcare directly to every signed artist — beyond the SAG-AFTRA eligibility. Almost all signed musicians are “gig economy” workers without full-time employment and receive income through touring, sponsorship, streaming and other revenue sources. They tend to be disinclined to do what a typical employer would ask of an employee: report to a cubicle to work for a corporate supervisor or give up the rights to their songs and other work to an employer. “It would not be in an artist’s best interests to be an employee at a label,” Allsep says. “They would get a monthly check vs. the opportunity to earn infinitely more.”

Artists could remain independent and negotiate more healthcare as part of their contract, but, according to Allsep, these expenses are “typically recoupable” — which means artists pay these costs from recording advances and must reimburse them out of future profits.

Label contracts, adds Howard King, an attorney who has represented Metallica, Dr. Dre, Eminem and others, “could include provisions for payment of health-insurance premiums or anything else, including payments for car payments or singing lessons.” All contracts are negotiable, so artists who have leverage (like a veteran touring star or someone with multiple viral videos) can request more benefits out of labels than other artists — perhaps like Roan used to be at Atlantic — who are less established as money-making stars. 

“Is that fair?” King asks. “I don’t think so, but that’s the practice.”

Healthcare resources for artists are available from several sources, in addition to the ACA, from the Recording Academy-run MusiCares to the Music Health Alliance to the American Federation of Musicians union representing orchestra musicians, studio workers and others, and the American Association of Independent Musicians, which has its own healthcare plan.

Major labels could do more in terms of boosting healthcare resources for artists, according to Kevin Erickson, director of the Washington, D.C., music-industry lobbyist group Future of Music Coalition, but not in the way Roan demanded. He argues labels must aggressively support the ACA, also known as Obamacare, against long-running defunding threats from the Trump Administration and Republicans, as well as advocating over the long term for a single-payer healthcare system, like those in Canada and parts of Europe. “[Labels] already have resources and the ability to fight for additional relief and support [for] the artist community,” he says, referring to the Recording Industry Association of America’s lobbying efforts on other issues. “We need more of that energy.”

Renata Marinaro, managing director of health services for the Entertainment Community Fund, suggests Roan, who is signed to Island Records, owned by major label Universal Music Group, was likely upset not with record-industry inaction but inadequate U.S. healthcare funding in general. “The frustration stems from the fact that there’s no universal coverage,” she says. “I don’t think you can lay that at the feet of any particular employer.”