Musicians deal with stingy streamers and AI threats, too. So why aren't they on strike?
LOS ANGELES — Every day, Joey DeFrancesco hears from fellow musicians who see actors and screenwriters on strike, and wish they were on a picket line too.
"A lot of musicians are really angry now. I get messages all the time asking 'Why aren't we on strike?'" said DeFrancesco, guitarist for the rock band Downtown Boys and co-founder of the activist nonprofit group United Musicians and Allied Workers. "Writers and actors are on strike demanding changes in how streaming platforms compensate labor. They're fighting at the bargaining table. Most musicians don't even have a seat at that table."
All the fears and complaints that Hollywood actors and writers have about low streaming-service payouts and threats of digital replacement are an ever-present reality for musicians and songwriters, too. Yet the rockers, pop singers and hip-hop artists who create the vast majority of music we consume are not on strike to protest their paltry royalties or AI inroads. One big reason? They're not unionized.
"We have to overcome some legal
