The singer castigated record labels in her Grammys speech – but, as music industry insiders explain, issues around artist health and support run even deeper

At this year’s Grammys, as she accepted the award for best new artist, Chappell Roan made an appeal to the labels and industry reps in the audience to “offer a liveable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists” – and in so doing, heated up long-simmering tensions in the music industry over artists’ wellbeing and remuneration.

Roan said that after she was dropped by Atlantic Records, a subsidiary of Warner, in the 2010s, she had little real-world job experience and “could not afford health insurance”. She added that “it was devastating to … feel so betrayed by the system”. She is now signed to Island, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group (UMG), and her speech seemed to be addressed specifically to major labels, whose profits have soared in recent years even as revenue for artists has gone down.