UMG UNVEILS RX FOR CREATIVES
JOHN DUFILHO hadn’t had a routine physical in 10 years when the email from Universal Music Publishing Group arrived last fall. The film/ TV composer and frontman of indie rock band
The Deathray Davies worked as an independent contractor and could not afford health insurance.
That changed when Dufilho, 52, learned that UMPG, which handles his publishing, and parent company Universal Music Group (UMG) had partnered with Music Health Alliance (MHA), a Nashville-based nonprofit that since 2013 has saved 18,000 musicians and industry workers an estimated $85 million in health care costs by helping them find insurance and navigate other healthcare issues, including counseling for survivors of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting. Its services are free.
Dufilho finally got that physical, and as the doctor listened to his heart, she “got this look on her face that you don’t want to see,” he says. Over Christmas, he underwent quintuple bypass surgery. “Opening that email saved me,” he says.
Dufilho is far from the only beneficiary of the program launched by UMG and MHA last April. In its first year, the initiative, which the music company has kept under wraps until now, helped 333 UMG and UMPG independent contractors — including many legacy artists — saving them more than $5.3 million in health care costs, estimates MHA founder/CEO Tatum Hauck Allsep. The emails went to anyone who had ever been signed to or released an album through a UMG label or was a qualifying UMPG songwriter.
UMG senior vp of royalties and copyright
James Harrington realized many creatives were losing their insurance during the pandemic, and he and Susan Mazo, UMG executive vp of global corporate social responsibility, events and special projects, led the team that devised the program, which included funding two UMG-dedicated positions at MHA. “This was not a hard sell,” Harrington says.
Allsep hopes the UMG affiliation will broaden MHA’s reach, especially within “communities of color,” she says. “We had a number of artists from Detroit, Chicago — areas where we didn’t have a lot of outreach — call.” She also hopes other music companies will follow UMG’s lead, adding that Sony Music recently contacted her.
Mazo says UMG plans to market the program to its creatives to increase awareness and would like to eventually include mental health care. She adds: “This is going to be a long partnership with Tatum and her team.”