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Universal Music Group Expands Mental Health Push With Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds
Universal Music Group has added new mental health partnerships with Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds to expand care for artists and staff.
Universal Music Group is widening its mental health and wellbeing efforts with new partnerships involving Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds.
Announced today, May 13, the agreements are part of a broader push by UMG to improve access to care across its creative community. The company says the new work will sit alongside its existing programs and partnerships.
Through its partnership with Amber Health, UMG’s artists and songwriters in North America will have 24/7 access to mental health services, including clinical expertise, crisis response, care planning, and specialized referrals. UMG will also work with the company to expand behavioral health support for employees in the United States and Canada, with added access to mental health resources.
UMG is also joining Project Healthy Minds as a founding member of its workforce mental health research initiative, and says it is the first music company to do so. The initiative is designed to help build a standardized framework for measuring workforce mental health and its relationship to organizational performance. According to the company, it will also work with academic partners, including Harvard Business School, to establish data-driven benchmarks and shape best practices across industries.
“Through our strategic partnerships with organizations like Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds — and our continued investment in groundbreaking programs like Music Health Alliance’s Music Industry Mental Health Fund,” says Susan Mazo, UMG’s chief impact officer, “we are working to redesign how our industry supports wellbeing. Our focus is on expanding access to care, reducing stigma, and ensuring that our artists and songwriters, employees, and the broader music community have the resources they need to thrive.”
Dr. Chayim Newman and Zack Borer, the co-founders of Amber Health, said the partnership marks “a real shift in how labels support their artists.” They added that UMG is helping embed “quick access to specialized mental health care directly into the labels’ infrastructure, making it proactive rather than an afterthought.”
Phil Schermer, founder and CEO of Project Healthy Minds, said: “Music has always been a vehicle for mental health conversations and now Universal Music Group is bringing that same honesty inside its own walls. When a company of UMG’s reach commits to this, the whole industry pays attention.”
The new agreements build on UMG’s recent work in the area. In February 2025, the company partnered with Nashville-based nonprofit Music Health Alliance on the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, which provides outpatient mental health resources for music industry professionals across the United States. That followed a healthcare access program UMG and MHA launched in April 2021.
Last year, UMG and Apple Music also launched Sound Therapy globally, a wellness collection aimed at clearer focus, deeper relaxation, and better sleep.
The timing lands in a sector that has already documented its strain. A 2019 study from Swedish digital distribution platform Record Union found that more than 73 percent of independent music makers reported symptoms of mental illness. Separately, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey 2024 from Australia’s music charity Support Act found that 53.5% of Australian music and creative workers face high or very high psychological distress, with more than 68% naming the cost of living as a major issue.
UMG says it will continue working with longtime partners, including the Mental Health Coalition, to highlight resources and research-backed ways music can support mental health.
