The American Affiliation of Unbiased Music (A2IM) has introduced the main points of its new A2IM Artist Professional Program, which permits members entry to group medical health insurance and different advantages with a $99/12 months membership. By means of a web-based storefront dubbed the A2IM Advantages Retailer, members can buy dental, imaginative and prescient, private gadgets safety, renters and residential insurance coverage, authorized companies, pet insurance coverage and extra. In response to Billboard, “about 30” of A2IM’s 600+ indie-label member corporations signed up for A2IM’s group insurance policy after they rolled out in September 2022. The A2IM Artist Professional Program now affords these advantages to particular person members, no matter their employer, which an A2IM rep says have “barely extra favorable pricing” than plans provided by means of the Reasonably priced Care Act (ACA), colloquially generally known as “Obamacare.”
Musicians signed to recording contracts with report labels are sometimes not categorized as staff—who could be entitled to the corporate’s advantages package deal—however as unbiased contractors who share income from the sale of their recordings in accordance with the phrases of their contract. These signed to offers with one of many three main label teams (Common, Sony, and Warner) are mechanically eligible for insurance coverage advantages by means of SAG-AFTRA, a labor union which covers round 5,000 vocalists along with tv and movie performers. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) covers near 70,000 instrumentalists, and likewise affords insurance policy to its members. In 2021, the Recording Academy introduced it had partnered with an organization known as Stride Well being to create a web-based portal that helps its members navigate the healthcare marketplaces ruled by the ACA.
Many uninsured musicians have been pressured to fundraise so as to pay for unexpected medical prices. 2011, DJ Premier shared on his Sirius XM radio present that DJ Kool Herc—the DJ who, along with his sister, threw the social gathering within the Bronx 50 years in the past that’s being celebrated this 12 months because the delivery of hip-hop—was in dire monetary straits after struggling well being issues. In 2010, it was revealed that Massive Star’s Alex Chilton had not sought medical consideration earlier than he died as a result of he didn’t have medical health insurance.