Artists on the frontlines: How strikes are redefining the US labor movement 

Labor Day celebrations in the U.S. typically focus on the long-suffering manufacturing sector in this country, on the labor unions that represent those workers, and on the hard-won gains achieved by the labor movement through the 20th century. But after last summer’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and with video game artists on strike now, artists are suddenly the vanguard of the U.S. labor movement, marching in parades alongside Teamsters, United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers members.  

These strikes also serve as a rare and urgent reminder that art, like auto and steel manufacturing, is work.  

Arts union strikes have been rare. The last time TV and film actors and writers walked off the job was in 1960, under the leadership of then-SAG president Ronald Reagan. And the longest job action in the arts sector was the last major musician’s strike, the so-called “recording ban” enacted from 1942-1944 by the president of the American Federation of Musicians.  

The American Federation of Musicians sought to protect live musical broadcasts on radio — a practice that was a huge, steady and relatively stable employment for many musicians — from the growing tendency of radio stations to cut costs by playing commercial recordings on the air instead. They ultimately succeeded in establishing a system of royalty payments, ensuring that musicians would be compensated for the ways that their recordings were used to generate revenue for radio (and later for television) broadcasting companies.   

The principal goal of the 1942 strike was to protect what was then a thriving musical middle class. Indeed, the royalty system offered some measure of income stability not just for the big stars of the day, like Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller, but also for less heralded — but no less important — career musicians. These musicians were able to maintain relatively comfortable lives as primary breadwinners. They could purchase homes, raise families and send their kids to college, largely on the amount of their wages, royalties and residuals earned through their work in the film, radio and television recording industries.   

Today, that has all changed. It’s easy (and quite common) to look at the seismic technological innovations in the late 20th and 21st century that have squeezed musicians’ incomes as natural and necessary aspects of life in a free market economy: if musicians are making less money, the argument goes, it’s because they’ve failed to adapt to a new world order.

The rise of digital musical tools, such as synthesizers and MIDI, since the 1980s has meant that, instead of hiring dozens of musicians to play on a television soundtrack or an advertising jingle, a producer can hire an individual or a small team of artists to do the composition and programming.

Online streaming has been catastrophic for musicians’ earning potential, with corporations such as Spotify intervening in the once-stable compensation system of royalties and residuals by negotiating new arrangements with record labels that pay out a tiny fraction of what radio and television used to.  

However, work in music has always required adapting to new commercial technologies, going back to the advent of printed sheet music in the 16th century. Musicians have always managed it with relative success. Nor is the contemporary financial squeeze due to a shrinking consumer market. In 2021 alone, Spotify’s annual revenue skyrocketed by 27 percent and it has climbed steadily ever since, leaving Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek with an estimated personal net worth of $4.9 billion.  

People everywhere have repeatedly proven how much they want and need music. So what’s different this time?

The problem is that musicians’ capacity to collectively organize to protect their interests — and ours — has been hamstrung by generations of anti-labor rhetoric and policy enacted by the U.S. government, especially since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose union-busting political career was ironically launched by his SAG presidency. With the AFM’s dwindling influence, musicians increasingly operate as atomized neoliberal free agents, competing with one another for relative scraps while Ek and other industry tycoons feast on the fruits of musicians’ labor.  

The consequences are dire and manifold.

With fewer economic prospects, artists from socioeconomically marginalized backgrounds are less likely to make a career out of music. The people who can still afford to participate in the industry are increasingly those who have access to generational wealth — statistically white and upper class. What’s more, with a growing number of musicians looking to crowdfunding and other pay-what-you-can tools to generate income for themselves, paying for music feels less like compensating someone for their labor and more like a philanthropic exchange. Philanthropy feels optional in a way that an invoice doesn’t, and yields precarious income that differs starkly from stable wage work.  

Luckily, a lot of musical workers and their allies are putting in the time to figure out real and sustainable solutions to these issues. The American Federation of Musicians, despite its constraints, is still vibrantly active in cities across North America. It recently played a key role in lobbying for access to federal employment insurance benefits, especially through the pandemic. Organizations like the New York-based Music Workers Alliance have worked with the union on many issues, including lobbying for urgently needed revisions to the Copyright Act to account for the financial sinkhole that is music streaming.

A systemic problem like the recuperation of the musical middle class requires both a systemic response and networked collective action. That collective is wide and deep, including all musical workers, from the lead singer to the roadie and all listeners in between — in short, anyone who cares about music.  

We know that we can’t live without music, so let’s do what we can to ensure that we get to continue to live with it, and that aspiring artists from all walks of life can continue to make a living from it.  

Mark Laver is an associate professor of music at Grinnell College.