As Musicians Hit Financial Rock Bottom, Kate Nash Shows Hers

There’s a line on the opening track of Kate Nash’s new album 9 Sad Symphonies—released in June of this year on the legendary label Kill Rock Stars—that keeps buzzing in my brain: “I guess what I’m asking is, am I a number or am I a person?” It’s a thought that haunts me regularly in our capitalism-ravaged world; to the powers-that-be, we are merely a means to an end, our only worth found in our consumption or our provision of labor in a system irrevocably stacked against us.

For musicians, this is an especially dire situation, as they’re expected to put out works of art that have taken years to create, all so that we can listen to them for free-or-cheap on vampiric corporate streaming platforms. And then they’re supposed to go on tour, which is a prohibitively expensive endeavor, especially since the pandemic. Touring costs have skyrocketed by about 40% since lockdowns, as USC music business professor and Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman told KCRW earlier this year. For anyone who’s not a megastar like Taylor Swift, going on tour often results in losses. Caroline Polachek, Little Simz, English Teacher and Animal Collective are just some of the artists that have spoken out in recent years about the financial perils of touring. 

Nash wasn’t having any of it. The English singer-songwriter is currently playing in the UK and Europe to celebrate 9 Sad Symphonies, but in light of the astronomical costs required for a high quality show (in terms of production value, safety and proper crew compensation), she announced last week that she’s starting an OnlyFans account, dubbing the move “Butts 4 Tour Buses.” (And she’s hardly the only notable artist on the platform—Lily Allen is selling feet pics on OnlyFans.)

“Honestly, I was really stressed about the finances of the tour. It genuinely was making me freak out because there’s just so many losses on tours, and it is a real financial strain,” Nash tells me over the phone ahead of her Leeds show. She’s no stranger to grassroots campaigns, having done Kickstarters in the past, and is already benefitting from her decision to start an OnlyFans. Nash explains: “It’s an amazing feeling. I feel really empowered. I’ve been able to hire a member of crew that I wasn’t able to bring to Europe, which is changing someone’s life and making my show better, and means I’m able to carry on touring a high quality show ethically. I’m just kind of like, where can my arse take me next? What can I reinvest back into? How much art am I going to be able to make with my bum?”

Of course, upon hearing that a woman was taking agency over her body, some critics crawled out of the woodwork, from your dime-a-dozen prudes to SWERFs (sex worker exclusive radical feminists—for the record, Nash clarified in an Instagram post that she’s “not sure” if what she’s doing counts as sex work, though she supports people in that industry). But Nash was also met with an outpouring of love from all sorts of people who understand what she’s doing. 

“I am actually shining a light on a really important fucking issue that I care about, about my industry failing every single musician within it. But it’s also hilarious because it’s my bum so, no matter what way you look at it, it always comes back to humor, and I love that. And so I love getting texts being like, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And I love that everyone’s so proud of my bum,” she says with a laugh.

It’s classic Nash; she’s always had a razor-sharp sense of humor, which many of us first enjoyed in 2007 with her biting single “Foundations.” In the years since her indie-twee hit record Made of Bricks, she’s released four albums (including my personal favorite, the angular, ambitious 2013 LP Girl Talk), starred in the Netflix series GLOW (another chance for her to show off her comedic chops) and been an outspoken advocate for women and queer people. 

“I continue to get more political as I get older… I think anyone who’s actually followed my music for the past 15 years, like, no one’s surprised by that,” she tells me. Seeing her start an OnlyFans and lead frank discussions online about how the music industry’s failed Nash and her fellow artists isn’t just inspiring—it’s ignited something in me. I’ve literally made loving music my job, and financial precarity is nearly ubiquitous for these people whose art I adore. It’s easy to feel despair, but Nash reminds us that action is the best way forward. I ask her what she thinks the establishment can do to help musicians.

“I mean, they have to do a lot because they’ve completely failed,” she says frankly. “The industry is going to collapse… Grassroots is in crisis, and if you take away the grassroots culture, you don’t have culture, you have corporations. So art’s going to become soulless and boring, there’ll be a few select people that can play arenas and do big shows and make money.” A lack of artists touring means less business for small and medium venues, which would then shut down, ending live music culture outside anything large scale. It’s a grim but unfortunately realistic picture of where we’re headed if corporate profits remain the priority. Both the creation and enjoyment of art will be for the wealthy only. Consider that the average ticket price in North America rose by 23% between 2022 and 2023, a trend that does not seem to be abating. At the same time, artists aren’t necessarily earning more from live performances; a survey conducted by Pirate.com (a franchise of self-service studios) found that 54% of artists are making the same amount of money from show fees as they did a couple years ago, while 29% are actually receiving less money than they did in the past.

And live shows are far from the only arena in the music industry where artists are losing out. This year, Spotify demonetized any tracks with less than 1,000 streams, which United Musicians and Allied Workers say accounts for approximately 86% of the songs on the platform. In the meantime, the company is enjoying record-high stock prices this month, according to Music Business Worldwide (one of the best resources right now for the unsexy but vital analysis of the economics behind the music industry). Spotify co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon rewarded themselves by cashing out $419 million in shares in a week.  

“The music industry is saying, ‘Diversity is not important and working class people shouldn’t be able to make music, and also we don’t care,’” Nash tells me. And daring to shed light on Spotify’s greed and lack of transparency potentially comes with consequences, she explains: “I shouldn’t be scared to talk about Spotify and how they don’t pay people ethically. But I know for fact that people get blacklisted for talking about it.” 

As we near the end of the year and people prepare to revel in their Spotify Wrapped, Nash hopes that we all think twice about sharing the platform’s free marketing tool that’s repackaged as a personality test: “It’s a corporation, it’s Coca-Cola, and [Spotify] just happen to have destroyed the music industry, and we happen to have let them, and I think that’s absolute shit.”

But just as we’ve let Spotify ruin the music industry, we also have the power to support artists and potentially right our trajectory. Buy musicians’ merch, buy physical releases, go to concerts, tell your friends about your favorite music, donate to local radio stations, pressure your representatives to champion cultural initiatives. It’s not as easy and it will cost you more money, but it is worth it; consider the hard work and hard-earned cash musicians have poured into the art that gives meaning to our lives. You can’t put a price tag on that.

Nash says it best: “Just don’t make this a weak flash in the pan. Where do we go now? Where can my arse take us?”

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s associate music editor.