When the musician Kate Nash discovered herself with a pile of unpaid invoices, she got here up with a approach to make some fast money: she joined OnlyFans.
Artwork by Jackie Lay
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Artwork by Jackie Lay
Final fall, English singer-songwriter Kate Nash was crunching numbers in between her North American and European excursions when she realized she was “primarily going into debt” touring her newest album, 9 Unhappy Symphonies, as she instructed NPR. For somebody who has been making music and promoting out reveals for practically twenty years, that was regarding.
Nash first broke out in 2007 together with her indie pop album Made from Bricks, which earned her widespread industrial and significant acclaim. Throughout a number of extra data and a transfer into performing together with a job on Netflix’s GLOW, Nash established herself as a multihyphenate, unafraid of elevating some eyebrows. And in November, when she discovered herself with a pile of unpaid invoices, she got here up with a approach to make some fast money: she joined OnlyFans.
OnlyFans was created practically a decade in the past as a social media platform the place “creators” add content material that “followers” pay to entry, both by way of a subscription or on a pay-per-view foundation. Creators can set their very own subscription tiers, a few of which can embrace customized messages and content material; followers can even tip creators.
It shortly garnered a popularity as a hub for sexual content material, on condition that it gave grownup performers and intercourse employees the power to create and add content material on their very own phrases, or a minimum of and not using a manufacturing studio because the intermediary. The platform takes a 20% lower and the remainder goes to the creator. In 2021, the web site briefly thought-about banning express content material however then reversed course. In a press release shared with NPR, an OnlyFans spokesperson famous that the platform has amassed greater than 4 million creator accounts and 305 million fan accounts since its inception.
When Nash opened her account, she joined the ranks of celebrities like Lily Allen, yeule and Tyga, who’ve all at one level or one other dabbled within the web site — although not all of them shared sexual content material. Many artists, together with Cardi B, Rico Nasty and Kash Doll, have additionally used OnlyFans to advertise their music or launch unique content material. In 2022, rapper and DJ Shygirl turned the primary artist to premiere a music video on the platform.
Nash — who sang the road “Do not inform me that you just did not attempt and take a look at my bum / Trigger I do know that you just did,” on 2007’s “Merry Completely satisfied” —- began off principally sharing pictures of her butt, although she additionally has pay-per-view ft content material and just lately ventured into erotic meals comedy movies (one is aptly titled “Cake Nash”). She says promoting horny pics to repay her tour invoices was like killing two birds with one stone. She named the marketing campaign “Butts 4 Tour Buses,” and inside six days, all her payments have been paid. “I simply thought it was humorous,” she says. “My arse is at all times out anyway.”
Not everybody acquired the joke. On Reddit and Instagram, individuals have been fast to criticize her determination.
“The one precedent you are setting [is] telling younger women and girls that it does not matter how proficient you’re — that you will discover extra success in promoting your self as a commodity,” reads one touch upon an Instagram publish the place Nash mentioned her selection. “Your selections do not exist in a vacuum. Alternative feminism is insidious.”
Nash says she thinks most critics are threatened by her private company. However she additionally hopes the outcry over her OnlyFans helps shine a highlight on the dialog she actually needs to have: why making a dwelling as a musician has gotten so arduous.
The streaming and touring disaster
The primary downside, she says, is the decreased worth positioned on recorded music by streaming websites like Spotify, which pays $.003 to $.005 per stream on common. In October, Lily Allen shared on X that she makes more cash from 1,000 subscribers on OnlyFans than she does from her practically 8 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify.
“It has been structured actually poorly for artists, however very properly for millionaires that need to simply deal with music as content material after which revenue from it and transfer on to the following factor when music finally collapses,” says Nash. “Which it’s going to, as a result of venues are closing and bands can’t afford to go on tour anymore.”
That results in the following downside: stay music is just not making up for the loss in streaming income. Nash emphasizes that her present on the street is nothing flashy, however there’s loads of work behind the scenes: hiring a band, a crew, a tour supervisor, a backline tech, gentle and sound engineers. And she or he refuses to chop corners in the case of paying her band and crew a dwelling wage, which implies she’s always at a loss on the finish of the day. Though she’s nonetheless promoting out the identical venues she was seven years in the past, Nash says the payment she’s getting paid now’s near what it was again then, however the price of all the pieces else it takes to tour has gone up.
Nash is just not the one artist grappling with the monetary toll of occurring the street. The previous couple of years have seen plenty of artists pressured to totally or partially cancel excursions, together with The Black Keys, Animal Collective and Santigold, who wrote a letter to her followers explaining how the rising price of touring — paired with the dangers and uncertainty of taking part in reveals because the pandemic waned —- has pushed many artists to their restrict. And even festivals like Coachella, New Orleans’ Jazz Fest and Governors Ball in New York Metropolis noticed slower ticket gross sales than standard final yr.
Within the band’s first interview for the reason that tour cancellation, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney instructed Rolling Stone they largely blame a consolidation of energy within the stay music business for his or her cancellations. Stephen Parker, Government Director of the Nationwide Unbiased Venue Affiliation (NIVA), is a bit more particular.
“The most important risk to stay touring in the USA is Reside Nation, their monopoly,” Parker tells NPR. “They proceed to take anti-competitive practices and make it tougher for up-and-coming artists to have the ability to survive on tour, and make it tougher for impartial venues to ebook reveals that may in the end enable them to maintain themselves open.”
In a press release to NPR, Reside Nation Leisure stated it’s invested in the way forward for impartial venues. “Reside Nation operates simply 4% of music venues within the U.S., and the vast majority of reveals we promote happen in venues we do not personal. In 2024 alone, we promoted practically 6,000 reveals in impartial theaters and golf equipment throughout the nation — greater than 3x the quantity from a decade in the past, so we have now each motive to see these venues thrive,” reads the assertion. “It is true that small venues, together with our personal, usually function on slim margins, however that is largely because of broader financial pressures confronted by companies throughout all sectors of the financial system — rising prices for hire, insurance coverage, labor, and operations.”
Relating to artists’ pay, Reside Nation additionally says its “payouts to membership and theater acts have been up 25% final yr in comparison with 2019. And, on prime of that, our On The Highway Once more program, which incorporates artists conserving 100% of their merchandise earnings, delivered tens of hundreds of thousands of income.”
Final Could, the Justice Division and 30 states filed an antitrust lawsuit to interrupt up Ticketmaster and its mother or father firm, Reside Nation, citing considerations of an unlawful monopoly that controls ticketing, promotion, venue possession and artist administration, all of which may trigger a regarding rise in ticket costs. Then in August, the UK’s Competitors and Market Authority launched an investigation into Ticketmaster’s use of dynamic pricing for Oasis reunion ticket gross sales. Although the 2 authorized instances in opposition to the corporate aren’t associated, they arrive right down to the identical accusation: Ticketmaster may very well be abusing its market energy to reap the benefits of its shoppers.
“The DOJ’s lawsuit will not decrease ticket costs for followers or tackle the problems they care about—service charges and entry to in-demand reveals,” Reside Nation stated in a press release to NPR. “The actual downside is the secondary market the place resellers drive up costs and siphon billions out of the business, hurting each artists and followers.”
Parker says the present system does not solely harm followers and artists; it hurts everybody concerned in placing on a present.
“The prices of placing on a tour are borne by the venue and the promoter and the artists and their groups,” he says. “I feel it is vital that so many individuals are profiting off of excursions proper now who put no pores and skin within the recreation with a purpose to make it possible for these venues and people artists can proceed to maintain their doorways open and proceed to tour.”
“In fact it’ll ruffle some individuals’s feathers,” people singer and impartial artist Lizzie No says about her OnlyFans account. “That is what we’re up in opposition to as ladies on this business.”
Cole Nielsen
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Cole Nielsen
Liberation behind a paywall
Folks singer and impartial artist Lizzie No is among the many artists feeling that price. She spent most of 2024 touring her third full-length album Halfsies, which landed them one in every of 25 coveted spots on Rolling Stone‘s “Way forward for Music” difficulty final yr. However good opinions do not pay the payments.
“I hadn’t actually made any cash after working continuous for 10 and a half months, not per week off. I missed the start of my nephew as a result of I used to be in England taking part in a competition, and that is the job to a point,” No says. “However on the identical time, we put within the work as a band and I got here house with nothing in my pocket and loads of good press about me.”
In November, No — who additionally co-hosts the podcast Primary Folks — opened an OnlyFans account. They’re nonetheless constructing a subscriber base on the platform, which they are saying is a blended bag of people that comply with them due to their music and individuals who found their music by way of their OnlyFans. What No posts is a piece in progress too; just lately, she performed a casual survey to see what sort of content material individuals are keen to tip for. The outcomes vary from movies of No placing on lotion to horny voice memos to recordings of her studying poetry out loud.
“I am studying so much about what individuals are keen to pay for and what individuals take into account to be precious, which is definitely actually stunning,” they are saying. “It is about like, ‘I’ll pay a month-to-month payment to have entry to you as a Black lady,’ the place individuals virtually at all times suppose they’ve entry to me. It has been extremely empowering to have the ability to monetize that digital intimacy that folks have been taking without cost for a very long time.”
One other advantage of OnlyFans has been the liberty of speech. As a people and Americana musician, No says political protest is vital to her artwork. She’s always determining how she will be able to use her attain on and off tour to advertise reproductive, social and environmental justice — however her concepts aren’t at all times welcomed by individuals on-line or within the music business. OnlyFans, she says, supplies an area the place she will be able to share with out filters, and its popularity helps her cost greater than she would on a web site like Patreon. “If individuals are afraid of what I’ve to say, then I’ve a censored adults-only web site the place I can put all of that stuff that no one actually needed to listen to from me,” she says.
A few of that now contains unreleased music they’re engaged on, and No is way from being the one musician who finds liberation behind the paywall. Dembow provocateur Tokischa did intercourse work earlier than her music took off, and she or he’s spoken in interviews about how OnlyFans gave her the funds to put money into her profession. However she instructed the outlet hypebae the actual motive she opened an account is as a result of she acquired banned from Instagram for posting the type of sexual content material she enjoys making.
No says it is not a coincidence that artists who’ve endured objectification within the music business — significantly Black ladies and ladies of coloration — are discovering monetary and bodily autonomy in utilizing those self same instruments in opposition to a system that doesn’t compensate them pretty. Which isn’t to say it does not include backlash; No says they have been shocked by how even people who find themselves near them have responded to their OnlyFans with pity or condescension.
“I do not care about what’s acceptable in American society. Slavery was acceptable in American society,” No says. “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I am making an attempt to arrange the financial situations beneath which I can create radical, visionary Black artwork. In fact it’ll ruffle some individuals’s feathers. That is what we’re up in opposition to as ladies on this business.”
Gig work and the creator financial system
A variety of the work that goes into turning a revenue on OnlyFans — curating a social media presence, charming a web based viewers’s consideration and always churning out content material — can already be a not-so-unspoken requirement of being a musician in the present day.
Aryana Safaee is a sociology PhD scholar at SUNY Albany specializing in labor rights and the commodification of non-public connections. Her grasp’s thesis, titled Intercourse, Love, and OnlyFans, explored digital intercourse work as a labor difficulty. She says OnlyFans is uniquely positioned on the intersection of gig work and the creator financial system.
“OnlyFans is totally different from different gig work as a result of should you’re a DoorDash driver, you get despatched clients to do deliveries for,” she says. “On OnlyFans, you’re liable for discovering your personal subscribers. That is one of many largest parts of unpaid labor that does not get mentioned: you need to have a preexisting platform for it to be economically viable for you.”
That is one motive musicians usually discover success on the platform; OnlyFans offers them a approach to straight money in on the fan base and social media following they’ve already labored to construct. However Safaee says the presence of celebrities on OnlyFans comes with its personal problems.
When former Disney star and singer Bella Thorne joined the platform in 2020, she instantly set a file by turning into the primary creator to earn $1 million in sooner or later. However after dissatisfied clients complained for refunds, OnlyFans introduced modifications to cost buildings, together with a $50 charging restrict for unique content material, a $100 cap on ideas and month-to-month slightly than weekly funds. Different OnlyFans creators took to social media to criticize Thorne for hurting their backside line, although the corporate has denied that the brand new guidelines have been brought on by one person. Nonetheless, the singer issued an apology on social media and stated she was assembly with the platform to debate the reasoning behind the brand new insurance policies. Thorne’s workforce and OnlyFans didn’t reply to NPR’s requests for remark.
Safee says sudden modifications to OnlyFans’ insurance policies can have main impacts on the intercourse employees who rely on it as a main supply of earnings. “So getting abruptly banned or having their account frozen or they are not in a position to withdraw — that may actually be a matter of with the ability to eat that day, which is not essentially the place that a few of these musicians is perhaps in,” she says.
Safaee says digital intercourse work is flawed, however that artists who be a part of OnlyFans ought to take heed to how they will use their platforms to destigmatize intercourse work and advocate for higher working situations for all creators. Kate Nash says she hopes her time on OnlyFans can assist elevate visibility for intercourse work as a labor difficulty.
“I feel the extra that you may empower the intercourse employee, the higher. Individuals are exploited in intercourse work as they’re exploited in nail salons,” says Nash. “I do not suppose the reply is like, do not ever get your nails completed or do not ever do intercourse work. I feel it is: empower employees as a lot as potential.”
And Nash additionally needs to see working situations enhance within the music business. She’s been a vocal supporter of a voluntary levy backed by the British authorities that will make investments £1 of each stadium or area tour ticket bought into grassroots venues. Each No and Nash, who come from working class backgrounds, additionally emphasize how vital it’s for artists and not using a monetary security web or household cash to have the ability to see a future for themselves within the business — particularly ladies. Nash says it doesn’t matter what her Instagram haters say, she’s proud to be utilizing this second in her profession to talk up for them.
“I feel I am an awesome instance to younger ladies as a result of my complete profession, I’ve put ladies and women first and fought for them to have a spot within the music business,” she says. “I would like them to be paid pretty for his or her work. I would like them to see a future. I would like them to not be signed to a label after which simply instructed to make TikToks all day. I would like there to be sustainability and longevity.”
