Chappell Roan’s Grammy speech and the need for creative agency

The right comment from the right person in the right venue can completely change a conversation.

That’s what’s happened this week when pop star Chappell Roan did something unexpected during her Grammy’s speech on Sunday: she told an uncomfortable truth.

I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists. 

“Because I got signed so young… when I got dropped I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance. It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and so dehumanized to not have health care. If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I would have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?

She’s absolutely right. Though artists of all kinds are celebrated on-stage and on-screen, they have little social stability or economic foundation off it. In a world of global corporations, artists and creative people are 1099 NPCs with limited power and agency of their own.

The most significant new financial tools for artists in recent decades have been patronage (crowdfunding) and subscriptions — basic instruments that have existed for centuries yet felt revolutionary because so few financial tools exist for artists.

Roan challenges labels and all creative institutions to support the artists on whose shoulders their empires rest. Despite her valiant words on an important stage, it’s unlikely to move the needle. The system isn’t going to change itself.

The path forward isn’t one where we as creative people continue to rely on outside institutions to provide for us. Only a tiny percentage of us even get that chance. The path forward is one where creative people make new institutions of our own.

It’s this goal, more than anything else, that is the mission of Metalabel. To make a new structure that creative people can use to build something bigger than themselves.

Many components of this vision exist today in Metalabel: infrastructure for creative people to fluidly come together in small groups around shared visions. Professional release tools that preserve independence. Transparent shared finances that keep artists and creators in control. 

In just a few months we’ll introduce our most significant release to date. One that speaks directly to the issues Roan raises, and that introduces a truly new path forward for all creative people — on Metalabel and off. 

A minority of respondents in our Anonymous Creative Futures survey thought it would be better to be an artist in 2025 than in years past. Things feel dark for artists right now. We face many threats and the allies feel few. 

But it’s in the pressure of darkness that we find the light.

We’re not without hope. We just need direction. A new creative era awaits. We’re going to build it together, step by step.