Worker’s Song

When Chappell Roan called for record labels to provide health insurance for their artists at the Grammys earlier this year, a number of commentators were quick to point out that some already do: artists signed to major labels, who are signatories to the contracts with the major performers’ unions, are eligible for SAG-AFTRA coverage. Their session-musician counterparts, meanwhile, can qualify for similar benefits through the once-powerful American Federation of Musicians (AFM). But as artists face new challenges specific to the twenty-first century—poverty-level streaming royalties, AI ghost artists, corporate consolidation of ticketing and touring—traditional unions have come to be seen as irrelevant, anachronistic. Most musicians will go their entire careers without ever signing a union card.