The Union Dilemma: AFM and the Illusion of Protection
At first glance, unionization seems like a logical response to the power imbalance between musicians and venues. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), one of the oldest and most powerful musician unions, was designed to protect performers from exploitation, ensure fair pay, and establish industry standards. But in practice, its evolution has often worked against the interests of the very musicians it was meant to support.
The biggest issue? It operates on a model built for a vanished era—one where unionized gigs were plentiful, live music was the dominant entertainment form, and session work was a stable career. In today’s fragmented industry, the AFM’s rigid structures, high dues, and bureaucratic processes have made it difficult for independent musicians to thrive. Rather than adapting to the gig economy, digital platforms, and the rise of DIY music culture, the AFM has doubled down on protecting a shrinking pool of institutionalized jobs—mostly orchestras, symphonies, and legacy session work—while doing little to address the brutal realities of indie touring, streaming economics, or pay-to-play exploitation.
Worse, it has often alienated venues and indie promoters by enforcing outdated rules that make live music more expensive and less flexible, further driving small clubs toward DJ nights, karaoke, and cover bands instead of original artists. And while union contracts once secured fair wages in a predictable system, today’s music economy is anything but predictable. A one-size-fits-all approach to live music doesn’t work when some musicians are fighting to get paid and others are paying to play.
Ultimately, the AFM, as it stands, is structured to protect a professionalized class of musicians that barely exists anymore. It hasn’t meaningfully addressed the digital economy, and it’s done little to stop the hollowing out of the middle class in music. If anything, by clinging to old models, it may have accelerated the divide—leaving most musicians fending for themselves while the industry’s top tier reaps all the rewards.
Why AFM-Style Unionism Undermines the Winter Warmer Model
As much as I love the stories of old-school unionism—the working-class heroism, the strikes, the brotherhood—AFM-style music unions are the wrong tool for the grassroots creative industry. The path to success outlined in the Winter Warmer model—community-driven, hyper-local, and built on organic participation—thrives on flexibility, collaboration, and audience connection. Traditional union structures, built to regulate a different era of professional music, tend to stifle rather than support this kind of innovation.
AFM-style rules create barriers between musicians and venues instead of strengthening those relationships. They introduce rigid pay scales, bureaucratic requirements, and an enforcement mindset that assumes the venue is the problem, rather than working to create an ecosystem where live music can thrive. This approach doesn’t work in an industry where most musicians today aren’t looking for protected wage floors—they’re looking for ways to build audiences, create demand, and sustain their craft in a new economic reality.
The Winter Warmer success story proves that coming together voluntarily, creatively, and in a spirit of mutual support is more powerful than a one-size-fits-all labor model. Instead of focusing on collective bargaining against venues (many of which are struggling themselves), musicians need new models of collaboration—more carrot than stick. This could mean cooperatives, shared resources, or new funding structures that support the entire live music ecosystem, rather than policing it.
It’s not that musicians don’t need to organize—but they need to do it in a way that makes playing music easier, not harder, more sustainable, not bureaucratic. The old union playbook—while heroic in its own time—was written for factory floors and session orchestras. The grassroots creative industry needs something different. It needs innovation, not regulation