Kate Nash and Lily Allen on OnlyFans should be a wake-up call for the music industry

For the bulk of artists, making euphony is financially unsustainable. According to a census conducted by the Musicians’ Union, astir fractional of moving musicians successful the UK gain little than £14,000 a twelvemonth from their craft, portion a further fractional person to prolong their careers with different forms of income. It’s casual to ideate that these are the aspiring performers making tunes successful their bedrooms and moonlighting arsenic bartenders, but adjacent household names are turning to alternate income streams.

British vocalist Kate Nash announced connected Thursday that she would commencement posting pictures of her bottommost connected big website OnlyFans to rise wealth for her tour. The Foundations vocalist has astir a cardinal monthly listeners connected Spotify, and is playing each crossed the UK, including a sold retired gig successful London, but says that touring is simply a nonaccomplishment making exercise.

She started her “Butts 4 Tour Buses” leafage successful bid to guarantee “good wages and harmless means of question for my set and crew”. Nash would alternatively you gawk astatine her gluteus maximus than perceive to Foundations connected Spotify. "No request to watercourse my music, I’m bully for the 0.003 of a penny per watercourse thanks," she told her followers connected Instagram.

For an autarkic solo creator to marque the UK surviving wage they would request 9 cardinal streams a year. But astir artists request acold much arsenic gross is divided betwixt bands, with grounds labels often taking a hefty cut.

While Spotify tin supply a reliable if paltry root of income, touring is lone profitable for musicians playing large venues to sold retired crowds. A survey conducted by rehearsal abstraction web Pirate Studios recovered that lone 29% of artists marque a nett from tours. Rising costs and a flailing system person exacerbated this, and a authorities study earlier this twelvemonth recovered that artists are facing a “cost-of-touring” crisis, with travel, accommodation and nutrient prices each higher than ever.

Even artists who are ostensibly astatine the apical of their crippled suffer. English singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri released a critically acclaimed medium this year, played the Other Stage astatine Glastonbury and volition unfastened for Sabrina Carpenter connected the UK and European limb of her circuit successful 2025. Yet successful August Chinouriri had to cancel a bid of shows and festivals successful the US, saying that "the fiscal strain of touring has go excessively much".

With her backside hustle, Nash follows successful the footsteps of Lily Allen, who started selling pictures of her feet connected OnlyFans implicit summer. She had the thought aft seeing that her feet had a cleanable 5 prima standing connected WikiFeet, a photo-sharing ft fetish website. Subscribers wage £8 a period to entree her posts. In October, Allen claimed that shots of her well-pedicured trotters were earning her much wealth than Spotify streams – and that’s saying something, considering Allen has implicit 7 cardinal monthly listeners and much than a cardinal streams connected her apical 3 songs.

It’s not conscionable a mode to bring location the bacon, though: Allen appears to bask it. “I’m uncovering this really rather empowering,” she said connected her podcast, Miss Me, successful July. “Having been precise sexualized from a precise aboriginal age, and virtually everybody other successful the process profiting from that sexualization, it’s really truly amusive to beryllium like, successful powerfulness and successful power of thing that I find truthful silly,”

Similarly, Kate Nash is not looking for pity. “Don’t beryllium ‘sad’ that I started an onlyfans to money my tours,” she wrote connected Instagram today. “It’s precise empowering and selling pics of my arse is amusive and funny”. Nash says her “arse is shining a airy connected the problem” that “music has small to nary value”.

While Nash and Allen tin usage their ample societal media presences to beforehand their OnlyFans content, astir musicians don’t person a pursuing who would beryllium consenting to wage for pictures of them. Nash thinks that determination needs to beryllium “drastic change” successful the music industry. “We request HR departments, we request just wages. I person had tons of acquisition of being exploited,” she told LBC. Perhaps this volition beryllium the commencement of manufacture reform, from the bottommost up.