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.

  • mannycalavera@feddit.ukEnglish
    193·
    1 month ago

    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

    Interestingly just under the income tax threshold. So you could quite easily set yourself up as a Ltd with you as the director and sole employee, claim the full income tax threshold as the employee and live off the dividends as a director whilst saving tax there too.

    I wonder if these musicians have considered a more tax efficient route for their craft? What a crazy idea. Of course musicians are famous for assiduously paying all the taxes they can.

    Someone with more time than me might be interested in looking up the holding companies for Kate Nash or Lilly Allen and checking out their finances. 🙃😄.

      • mannycalavera@feddit.ukEnglish
        21·
        1 month ago

        That’s not how it works. It’s not about setting up a company to make yourself under the threshold. They’re only under the threshold because of how they’ve structured their finances.

        1. Set up company.
        2. Be director of company.
        3. Also be only employee of company as a separate legal entity.
        4. Get people to pay the company for any work the employee (i.e. you) does.
        5. Pay the employee (i.e. you) a maximum of just below the threshold for income tax each year.
        6. Anything else starys in the company.
        7. The company pays the director in the form of dividends (i.e. you) at a reduced tax rate any extra money it may have collected.
        8. You’ve saved income tax entirely and you’ve reduced your tax liability on anything else.

        Here’s Kate’s registered companies which are free to look up online by anyone. Whilst Kate the employee scrapes by under the tax threshold and has to graft on Onlyfans, Kate the director is in charge of a company that at the year end 2023 owed £164,586 (2022- £172,382) to the director (i.e. Kate).