Why would a musician be a part of OnlyFans? : NPR

Final fall, English singer-songwriter Kate Nash was crunching numbers in between her North American and European excursions when she realized she was “basically going into debt” touring her newest album, 9 Unhappy Symphonies, as she instructed NPR. For somebody who has been making music and promoting out exhibits for practically 20 years, that was regarding.

Nash first broke out in 2007 along with her indie pop album Product of Bricks, which earned her widespread business and significant acclaim. Throughout a number of extra data and a transfer into performing together with a task 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 strategy 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 means of a subscription or on a pay-per-view foundation. Creators can set their very own subscription tiers, a few of which can embody personalised messages and content material; followers also can tip creators.

It shortly garnered a repute as a hub for sexual content material, on condition that it gave grownup performers and intercourse staff the power to create and add content material on their very own phrases, or no less than with no manufacturing studio because the intermediary. The platform takes a 20% minimize and the remaining goes to the creator. In 2021, the web site briefly thought of banning specific 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 strive and take a look at my bum / Trigger I do know that you just did,” on 2007’s “Merry Glad” —- began off largely sharing photographs of her butt, although she additionally has pay-per-view toes content material and not too long ago ventured into erotic meals comedy movies (one is aptly titled “Cake Nash”). She says promoting attractive 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 all the time 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 gifted you might be — that you’re going to discover extra success in promoting your self as a commodity,” reads one touch upon an Instagram submit the place Nash mentioned her alternative. “Your decisions do not exist in a vacuum. Selection 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 desires to have: why making a residing as a musician has gotten so laborious.

The streaming and touring disaster

The primary downside, she says, is the lowered 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 subsequent factor when music finally collapses,” says Nash. “Which it’s going to, as a result of venues are closing and bands can not afford to go on tour anymore.”

That results in the subsequent downside: reside music shouldn’t be making up for the loss in streaming income. Nash emphasizes that her present on the street is nothing flashy, however there may be plenty of work behind the scenes: hiring a band, a crew, a tour supervisor, a backline tech, gentle and sound engineers. And he or she refuses to chop corners in relation to paying her band and crew a residing wage, which implies she’s continuously 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 could be near what it was again then, however the price of all the pieces else it takes to tour has gone up.

Nash shouldn’t be the one artist grappling with the monetary toll of happening the street. The previous couple of years have seen a variety 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 value of touring — paired with the dangers and uncertainty of enjoying exhibits 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 common 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 reside music trade for his or her cancellations. Stephen Parker, Govt Director of the Nationwide Impartial Venue Affiliation (NIVA), is a bit more particular.

“The largest risk to reside touring in america is Reside Nation, their monopoly,” Parker tells NPR. “They proceed to take anti-competitive practices and make it more durable for up-and-coming artists to have the ability to survive on tour, and make it more durable for impartial venues to guide exhibits that may in the end permit 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 nearly all of exhibits we promote happen in venues we do not personal. In 2024 alone, we promoted practically 6,000 exhibits in impartial theaters and golf equipment throughout the nation — greater than 3x the quantity from a decade in the past, so we’ve got 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 resulting from broader financial pressures confronted by companies throughout all sectors of the financial system — rising prices for lease, insurance coverage, labor, and operations.”

In terms of 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 high of that, our On The Street Once more program, which incorporates artists retaining 100% of their merchandise income, 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 issues of an unlawful monopoly that controls ticketing, promotion, venue possession and artist administration, all of which might 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 towards the corporate aren’t associated, they arrive all the way down to the identical accusation: Ticketmaster could possibly be abusing its market energy to benefit from 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 exhibits,” 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 trade, 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 believe it is necessary that so many individuals are profiting off of excursions proper now who put no pores and skin within the recreation with the intention to ensure that these venues and people artists can proceed to maintain their doorways open and proceed to tour.”

Liberation behind a paywall

Folks singer and impartial artist Lizzie No is among the many artists feeling that value. She spent most of 2024 touring her third full-length album Halfsies, which landed them considered one of 25 coveted spots on Rolling Stone‘s “Way forward for Music” problem final yr. However good critiques do not pay the payments.

“I hadn’t actually made any cash after working continuous for 10 and a half months, not every week off. I missed the beginning of my nephew as a result of I used to be in England enjoying a competition, and that is the job to a point,” No says. “However on the similar time, we put within the work as a band and I got here residence with nothing in my pocket and plenty 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 means of their OnlyFans. What No posts is a piece in progress too; not too long ago, she carried out an off-the-cuff survey to see what sort of content material persons are keen to tip for. The outcomes vary from movies of No placing on lotion to attractive voice memos to recordings of her studying poetry out loud.

“I am studying loads about what persons are keen to pay for and what individuals contemplate 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 girl,’ the place individuals virtually all the time suppose they’ve entry to me. It has been extremely empowering to have the ability to monetize that digital intimacy that individuals have been taking totally free for a very long time.”

One other good thing about OnlyFans has been the liberty of speech. As a folks and Americana musician, No says political protest is essential to her artwork. She’s continuously 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 all the time welcomed by individuals on-line or within the music trade. OnlyFans, she says, gives an area the place she will be able to share with out filters, and its repute helps her cost greater than she would on a web site like Patreon. “If persons 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 wished 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 he or she’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 trade — significantly Black girls and girls of shade — are discovering monetary and bodily autonomy in utilizing those self same instruments towards 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 circumstances below which I can create radical, visionary Black artwork. After all it will ruffle some individuals’s feathers. That is what we’re up towards as girls on this trade.”

Gig work and the creator financial system

Plenty of the work that goes into turning a revenue on OnlyFans — curating a social media presence, charming a web-based viewers’s consideration and continuously churning out content material — can already be a not-so-unspoken requirement of being a musician at present.

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 problem. 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 when you’re a DoorDash driver, you get despatched clients to do deliveries for,” she says. “On OnlyFans, you might be accountable for discovering your individual subscribers. That is one of many greatest components of unpaid labor that does not get mentioned: you must have a preexisting platform for it to be economically viable for you.”

That is one motive musicians usually discover success on the platform; OnlyFans provides them a strategy to immediately 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 in the future. However after disillusioned clients complained for refunds, OnlyFans introduced adjustments to fee buildings, together with a $50 charging restrict for unique content material, a $100 cap on suggestions and month-to-month somewhat 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 crew and OnlyFans didn’t reply to NPR’s requests for remark.

Safee says sudden adjustments to OnlyFans’ insurance policies can have main impacts on the intercourse staff who rely upon 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 may be 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’ll use their platforms to destigmatize intercourse work and advocate for higher working circumstances for all creators. Kate Nash says she hopes her time on OnlyFans may help elevate visibility for intercourse work as a labor problem.

“I believe the extra that you would be able to 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 believe it is: empower staff as a lot as doable.”

And Nash additionally desires to see working circumstances enhance within the music trade. She’s been a vocal supporter of a voluntary levy backed by the British authorities that might make investments £1 of each stadium or area tour ticket offered into grassroots venues. Each No and Nash, who come from working class backgrounds, additionally emphasize how necessary it’s for artists with no monetary security internet or household cash to have the ability to see a future for themselves within the trade — particularly girls. 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 believe I am an amazing instance to younger girls as a result of my total profession, I’ve put girls and women first and fought for them to have a spot within the music trade,” 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.”