However, Herbert, who is on the board at Audoo, a music company that ensures creatives are paid fairly for public performances of their music, has called for a change in the way the industry operates. “Rather than putting our efforts into stopping it,” he says, “the answer should lie in creating the right education and support for young artists and making the industry a more transparent place. Young artists and their guardians need to be fully informed and aware of the risks, as well as the rewards, that come alongside fame and the industry needs to put some proper structural support around the artists, including trained chaperones, counsellors, sociable working hours, meal breaks and regular down time.”
In the UK, schoolchildren up to the age of 16 are protected by the Child Performance Licensing laws, which legislates that children performing in public or on TV must apply for a licence to perform from their local authority to ensure their “health, welfare and kind treatment” within the entertainment industry. However, this stops once the 16-year-olds are of a school-leaving age, meaning that 16 and 17-year-olds aren’t covered by these welfare rules and could easily fall through the cracks, especially if their surrounding team are working to a different agenda – where profit takes priority over the artist’s wellbeing. As Ed Magee, chair of the National Network for Children in Employment and Entertainment tells the : “These 16-year-olds who have finished compulsory school and 17-year-olds would not covered by legislation, and so instead the responsibility to look after them would fall on to the production company, their agent and their parents, as they are still a child after all, and they would need their parents’ consent.
“We’re currently looking at creating a guide for parents about some of the things they need to think about when their child is going into the entertainment industry, [including] the safeguarding, travel abroad, and who is looking after the welfare of their children.”
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In the US, while there are different laws for child actors across each state, in California, these are quite extensive – for example, a 16-year-old can only work a maximum of six hours on a school day, with at least one hour of “rest and recreation” a day. But as Jaffe points out, there is no equivalent legislation for teens in the music industry. “We should be looking to create an environment that’s more responsible for minors who are unable to make the best choices for themselves,” he says. “But I also think we need to work with these young people and allow them to put up their own boundaries. If they have started their career from a young age, they may not feel like they’re not in control, but we could help them take control and care for their own wellbeing more fully.” This should also stretch to aftercare, he suggests, and helping with the transition back to “real life” following their immediate burst of fame.
The singer-turned-actor Lily Allen was first signed to a record label in the UK aged 17, and she has since documented the traumas that arose for her for being a young, female singer in the 2000s in her 2018 memoir, My Thoughts Exactly. However, on the most recent episode of her Sounds podcast, Miss Me?, she discussed with her co-host, Miquita Oliver, the issue of vulnerable young people working in the music world: “It does raise questions of support for young artists. Who benefits from them? It’s about profit and profit margins and I don’t think that these people necessarily care about the wellbeing of the people involved that are putting in all the work.
