President’s Message

In recent years, the rise of streaming as the preferred model of digital distribution and consumption has radically transformed the media marketplace. Worldwide, digital revenues and audiences have accelerated toward both advertiser-supported and subscription-based consumption models, benefiting digital service providers, copyright owners and producers, and other stakeholders. If current trends hold, the number of paid music subscribers worldwide will rise from more than 149 million today to 200 million by the end of this year.

I’ll have the privilege of attending the 23rd conference of the Theater Musicians Association (TMA) on August 20, at Local 47’s new offices in Burbank, California. TMA is the newest AFM player conference. It began its journey 25 years ago, and is now comprised of chapters organized among locals that negotiate local agreements with theatrical venues and presenters that book Pamphlet B tours.

The Federation resumed its discussions with the television industry in July, at ABC headquarters in New York City, for a successor agreement covering musicians who perform on late night and prime time variety shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, and The Voice, and on award shows such as the Grammy Awards and the Oscars.

The Federation’s negotiations with its bargaining partners, whether on an industry-wide, single-, or multi-employer basis, are a never-ending process. Other than contracts with touring producers such as the Broadway League, most of our negotiations seek improvements in compensation and working conditions when musicians are engaged to perform electronic media services either streamed or broadcast live, or captured for analog and digital distribution.

The United States currently faces a worsening multiemployer pension crisis. One recent report estimated that 114 multiemployer pension plans across the country will become insolvent over the next two decades. These plans cover nearly 1.3 million people and they are underfunded by more than $36 billion. The American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund (AFM-EPF, “the Fund”) is not immune to the forces driving this crisis.

The AFM-EPF, like many other multiemployer funds, was a robust, healthy pension fund through the late 1990s. In fact, our fund was actually overfunded, meaning that assets exceeded liabilities (promised benefits to participants for service already performed). Simply put, the Fund had more money on hand than it was projected to need to pay out as benefits in the future. In 1999, the AFM-EPF was 139% funded.