With paltry streaming royalties and a cost-of-touring crisis, it’s harder than ever to make money as a musician. Claudia Cockerell on the household names who are taking up side hustles, and what it says about the state of the music industry

For the majority of artists, making music is financially unsustainable. According to a census conducted by the Musicians’ Union, nearly half of working musicians in the UK earn less than £14,000 a year from their craft, while a further half have to sustain their careers with other forms of income. It’s easy to imagine that these are the aspiring performers making tunes in their bedrooms and moonlighting as bartenders, but even household names are turning to alternative income streams.

British singer Kate Nash announced on Thursday that she would start posting pictures of her bottom on adult website OnlyFans to raise money for her tour. The Foundations singer has nearly a million monthly listeners on Spotify, and is playing all across the UK, including a sold out gig in London, but says that touring is a loss making exercise.

She started her “Butts 4 Tour Buses” page in order to ensure “good wages and safe means of travel for my band and crew”. Nash would rather you gawk at her gluteus maximus than listen to Foundations on Spotify. “No need to stream my music, I’m good for the 0.003 of a penny per stream thanks,” she told her followers on Instagram.

For an independent solo artist to make the UK living wage they would need 9 million streams a year. But most artists need far more as revenue is split between bands, with record labels often taking a hefty cut.

While Spotify can provide a reliable if paltry source of income, touring is only profitable for musicians playing big venues to sold out crowds. A survey conducted by rehearsal space network Pirate Studios found that only 29% of artists make a profit from tours. Rising costs and a flailing economy have exacerbated this, and a government report earlier this year found that artists are facing a “cost-of-touring” crisis, with travel, accommodation and food prices all higher than ever.

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With her backside hustle, Nash follows in the footsteps of Lily Allen, who started selling pictures of her feet on OnlyFans over summer. She had the idea after seeing that her feet had a perfect five star rating on WikiFeet, a photo-sharing foot fetish website. Subscribers pay £8 a month to access her posts. In October, Allen claimed that shots of her well-pedicured trotters were earning her more money than Spotify streams – and that’s saying something, considering Allen has over 7 million monthly listeners and more than a billion streams on her top three songs.

  • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
    7·
    22 days ago

    bandcamp gets the crown for “most least worst.” i’ve even met a few artists who say they prefer fans to stream on bandcamp to spotify or qobuz because they make enough more money per purchase than per stream, and enough streams convert to purchases, that they get paid more the more people are listening on bandcamp

    • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      22 days ago

      For sure. I try to buy all the music that I enjoy on bandcamp if possible, because as you say a purchase goes a lot further for the artist than any number of streams I might do over my lifetime.

      • OrlandoDoom@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        22 days ago

        I try and buy albums at shows mostly! They don’t put ridiculous markups on stuff at small shows, but some venues want a cut of merch sales too, which is why I’m assuming some venues you can’t get a band shirt at for less than 30 quid. I could be wrong about this if course, but I have seen it at bloodstock where bands were literally just chucking merch off stage because they would have had to pay hundreds of pounds to have merch up in the festival shop.