Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Chappell Roan’s speech at the 2025 Grammy awards was, in some ways, familiar to me. Her advocacy for healthcare and living wages for musicians was something I’ve heard over the past seven years I’ve spent interviewing musicians, whether signed to indie or major labels. As record labels and the music industry rake in record profits year after year, consistent financial support or any other kind of stability has virtually vanished to the point that artists of all stripes faced with any significant financial burden are forced to start Patreons just to make ends meet. So when Chappell stood up and demanded change — including a place to start — I thought to myself, Finally, a conversation can begin on bringing directive and specific change to the industry.
Unfortunately, that momentum has been derailed, and I’m not just referring to that op-ed, though it’s a huge part of it. The day after the Grammys, professor and former major label music exec Jeff Rabhan published a column in The Hollywood Reporter playing aggressive defence for the labels, insisting in a wildly condescending tone that the responsibility, actually, lies with artists like Chappell Roan. He challenged her to “do something about it rather than just talk about,” claiming she’s no longer a “scrappy” artist fighting on the fringes but part of the establishment. Roan’s response rightfully called him out, but she also shared she would be donating $25K to support uninsured artists, challenging him to do the same. (He declined.) And now, other musicians like Charli xcx and Noah Kahan have joined the cause, pledging $25K each, all in the name of “putting their money where their mouth is.”
Their generosity is bittersweet. While it’s true smaller artists will benefit from these donations, I can’t help but think they’re ultimately misguided and misplaced. The conversation’s now gotten twisted, something Rahban surely wanted to happen: Chappell’s laser-pointed critique of holding labels and the most powerful entities of the music industry accountable has fractured into a discourse of bad and ultimately unsustainable panaceas that don’t even address the original issue.
Let’s be clear here: the problem was never that bigger artists weren’t supporting smaller artists enough. The problem is that labels aren’t supporting their artists enough, period. Labels still need to step up and fix their part in the collapsing system — and to suggest artists themselves become the solution encapsulates pretty much everything that’s wrong and dangerous about the U.S.’s failing social infrastructure.
In 2024, according to Billboard, Chappell Roan’s label Island Records quadrupled its market share from 0.62% in 2023 to 2.49%, while other labels like Interscope and Warner also had “big years.” RIAA reported that the recorded music industry as a whole made $8.7 billion in revenue in the first-half of 2024 alone. While that’s not a breakdown of what individual record labels made, it’s safe to say major labels are doing completely fine when it comes to making record-level profit — and likely far, far exceeding whatever its most successful artists are taking home.
The problem was never that bigger artists weren’t supporting smaller artists enough. The problem is that labels aren’t supporting their artists enough, period.
With all that money on the table, in what world does it make sense for artists to be the one to pick up the slack? Rabhan argues that this is just “how the industry works,” record labels are “businesses, not charities” and their contracts are “loans” not a “salary” — familiar sentiments that benefit from the status quo. But then Rahban lists items that record labels do cover with their contracts: “recording costs, marketing, distribution and — if negotiated — tour support.” In that context, the exclusion of healthcare options seems more outrageous, not less.
To use Rahban’s words, if record labels are taking the risk to invest in the product, wouldn’t it make sense that the product’s well-being and health be part and parcel of that negotiation? Perhaps the only thing Rahban got right is that artists need to unionize — the actual first step to bringing about real change in the music industry.
Both Rabhan’s column and pop star donations are different kinds of distractions from the real issue: creating an actually sustainable financial safety net for musicians on a systemic level. It’s important that as the conversation moves forward, we aren’t distracted by temporary bandaid solutions. Only in late-capitalist America is the idea of asking celebrities to “lead by example” more alluring than imagining — and demanding — real change. Let’s not force Chappell Roan to become MrBeast, using her wealth to change lives while those who bear the most responsibility sit on their hands. She’s issued a call to action. The biggest stakeholders have now got to figure out how to heed it.
