Why don't musicians go on strike?

10:41Why can't musicians organize like their Hollywood counterparts?

As the writers and actors' strikes have brought Hollywood to a standstill over the past few months, we've gotten a clearer picture of just how little money the stars and creators of our favourite hit TV shows are making in the current streaming economy.

It's a reality that musicians know all too well. Ever since streaming services like Spotify became the default mode of listening for many music fans, artists have seen the dollars they once made from record (or even mp3) sales reduced to fractions of a penny per click.

Essentially, the dystopia that Hollywood workers are striking to avoid is one that musicians have been living in for over a decade now. So why haven't we seen the same sort of organized picket-line outrage in the music industry that we're currently seeing in the film and TV world?

The answer is very complicated, due to a complex matrix of legislative hurdles, industry structural barriers, and contractual chicanery that limits musicians' abilities to organize. To explain what's at stake — and where the opportunities to mobilization do exist — Commotion guest host Amil Niazi spoke with Nova Scotia-based music industry veteran Allison Outhit and Montreal journalist Luke Ottenhof, who recently examined the history of music unionization for Pitchfork.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Amil: Allison, what's the biggest difference between songwriters and screenwriters when it comes to matters of labour?

Allison: The thing is, it's not that collective action doesn't work [in the music industry] — it's just that there isn't any. Songwriters are actually collectivized, to some degree, through organizations like the Songwriters Association [of Canada], or through SOCAN, which represents songwriters and publishers. Those organizations work really hard on behalf of their membership. But recording artists –- the musicians – don't really have any form of effective representation when it comes to bargaining anywhere for their collective interests. So that's one of the issues. And then, of course, the other issue is that they're not really employees, in a way; they're deemed under the law to be independent contractors. That makes it a lot more difficult for musicians and artists to get access to, for example, some of the legal protections that you might have as a collective, or some of the social impetus that you might have as a collective.

Amil: Luke, you actually wrote a piece about this for Pitchfork, called "Why Songwriters Can't Have Their Own Writer Strike – Yet," and in it you talk a bit about this history of unionization within the music industry. So why don't we see the same degree of action?

Luke: Yeah, [the union] used to be really, really strong. One of the people that I spoke with for this story, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, is part of the United Musicians and Allied Workers, and he wrote a great piece last summer that detailed how strong the American Federation of Musicians [AFM] was in the early 20th century. They executed this enormous strike [in 1942] around vinyl recordings being introduced, because they weren't seeing the profits from that. And they got what they wanted. But then over the following decades, through some legislative decisions, and also through industry restructuring to scrape back those profits, that organizing power has really been legislatively curtailed in a way that actually opens musicians up to legal action if they collectively organize.

Amil: Alison, that strike Luke just mentioned was in 1942. I think we can probably agree a lot has changed since 1942, especially in music. So are these unions still effective for the average musician today?

Allison: Not in that sense. Back in the in the '30s, and '40s, when the American Federation of Musicians and its Canadian counterpart, the CFM, were very effective, it was a time when most musicians were employees who would be hired by a radio broadcaster or a symphony or they'd be hired as the house band for a big venue. And so the union was very effective in helping create better working conditions in that scenario. And then over time, as Luke mentioned, things started to change. The unions would still have a collective agreement, for example, with the major labels. But in the last 40+ years, more and more of the grassroots of the music industry has leaned towards the independent music sector, as opposed to these big institutions like radio broadcasters or giant venues. That's just not the working reality for most musicians anymore.

And unfortunately, the AFM and the CFM here in Canada haven't really figured out how to reorganize their ways of collaborating and representing in order to capture that. They still have a lot of relevance when it comes to helping artists get working visas in the United States, because they're the only reciprocal organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Homeland Security to actually do that. They have pensions, and you can get a discount on insurance and things like that. But what they can't do, and what they've never done, is help artists actually collectively bargain for better record deals, for example. And better record deals would lead to potentially better streaming rates … or at least a better share of terrible streaming rates.

Amil: Luke, it can't all be bad news, right? There has to be something positive that can be done when it comes to, for example, better streaming rates. What can musicians do if collective action is not the solution?

Luke: There have been a lot of grassroots efforts over the years to try and change [streaming rates], and I think that's going to be a hard one to budge. But what is exciting to me are folks like the United Musicians and Allied Workers, or the Music Workers Alliance in New York City — these are musicians who have independently decided to come together and see what they can do in their communities. And by their communities, I mean the venues they play in, the bookers and promoters they work with, the musicians they play with, the engineers they work with. For example, they're trying to see if they can organize recording studios to agree to certain rates and terms. Those sorts of things excite me — this sort of bottom-up approach where folks really do have the power to dictate and negotiate on their own terms, and to create these little niches. It might not be broad-scale change, but I think that's a really meaningful, really interesting way to go about it — and probably the one that has the most power at this point.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.