Why would a musician be 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 “primarily going into debt” touring her newest album, 9 Unhappy Symphonies, as she advised NPR. For somebody who has been making music and promoting out exhibits for almost 20 years, that was regarding.

Nash first broke out in 2007 along with her indie pop album Manufactured 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 strategy to make some fast money: she joined OnlyFans.

OnlyFans was created almost a decade in the past as a social media platform the place “creators” add content material that “followers” pay to entry, both via a subscription or on a pay-per-view foundation. Creators can set their very own subscription tiers, a few of which can embody customized messages and content material; followers can even tip creators.

It rapidly garnered a status as a hub for sexual content material, provided that it gave grownup performers and intercourse employees the power to create and add content material on their very own phrases, or not less than with out a 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 express content material however then reversed course. In an announcement 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 simply did not attempt and take a look at my bum / Trigger I do know that you simply did,” on 2007’s “Merry Comfortable” —- began off largely sharing photographs of her butt, although she additionally has pay-per-view toes content material and just lately 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 had been paid. “I simply thought it was humorous,” she says. “My arse is at all times out anyway.”

Not everybody received the joke. On Reddit and Instagram, folks had been fast to criticize her choice.

“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 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 needs to have: why making a dwelling as a musician has gotten so laborious.

The streaming and touring disaster

The primary drawback, she says, is the diminished 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 extra money from 1,000 subscribers on OnlyFans than she does from her almost 8 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify.

“It has been structured actually poorly for artists, however very nicely for millionaires that wish 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 would, as a result of venues are closing and bands can not afford to go on tour anymore.”

That results in the following drawback: stay music isn’t making up for the loss in streaming income. Nash emphasizes that her present on the highway is nothing flashy, however there may be numerous 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 on the subject of paying her band and crew a dwelling wage, which suggests she’s consistently 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 charge she’s getting paid now could be near what it was again then, however the price of all the things else it takes to tour has gone up.

Nash isn’t the one artist grappling with the monetary toll of happening the highway. The previous couple of years have seen quite a few artists pressured to completely 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 taking part in 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 traditional final yr.

Within the band’s first interview for the reason that tour cancellation, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney advised Rolling Stone they largely blame a consolidation of energy within the stay music trade for his or her cancellations. Stephen Parker, Government Director of the Nationwide Impartial Venue Affiliation (NIVA), is a bit more particular.

“The largest menace to stay touring in the USA is Stay 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 unbiased venues to guide exhibits that may finally permit them to maintain themselves open.”

In an announcement to NPR, Stay Nation Leisure stated it’s invested in the way forward for unbiased venues. “Stay 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 almost 6,000 exhibits in unbiased theaters and golf equipment throughout the nation — greater than 3x the quantity from a decade in the past, so we’ve each motive to see these venues thrive,” reads the assertion. “It is true that small venues, together with our personal, typically 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 lease, insurance coverage, labor, and operations.”

With regards to artists’ pay, Stay Nation additionally says its “payouts to membership and theater acts had been up 25% final yr in comparison with 2019. And, on high of that, our On The Street Once more program, which incorporates artists holding 100% of their merchandise earnings, delivered tens of hundreds of thousands of income.”

Final Might, the Justice Division and 30 states filed an antitrust lawsuit to interrupt up Ticketmaster and its mum or dad firm, Stay Nation, citing considerations 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 in opposition to the corporate usually are not associated, they arrive right down to the identical accusation: Ticketmaster could possibly be abusing its market energy to make the most of its shoppers.

“The DOJ’s lawsuit will not decrease ticket costs for followers or deal with the problems they care about—service charges and entry to in-demand exhibits,” Stay Nation stated in an announcement to NPR. “The true drawback 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 damage 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 essential that so many individuals are profiting off of excursions proper now who put no pores and skin within the sport with a view to make it possible for these venues and people artists can proceed to maintain their doorways open and proceed to tour.”

“In fact it should ruffle some folks’s feathers,” folks singer and unbiased artist Lizzie No says about her OnlyFans account. “That is what we’re up in opposition to as girls on this trade.”

Cole Nielsen

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Cole Nielsen

Liberation behind a paywall

People singer and unbiased 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 one among 25 coveted spots on Rolling Stone‘s “Way forward for Music” concern final yr. However good evaluations 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 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 some extent,” 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 numerous good press about me.”

In November, No — who additionally co-hosts the podcast Fundamental People — 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 via their OnlyFans. What No posts is a piece in progress too; just lately, she carried out a casual survey to see what sort of content material persons are prepared 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 rather a lot about what persons are prepared to pay for and what folks take into account to be beneficial, which is definitely actually lovely,” they are saying. “It is about like, ‘I’ll pay a month-to-month charge to have entry to you as a Black girl,’ the place folks nearly at all times 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 without spending a dime for a very long time.”

One other advantage of OnlyFans has been the liberty of speech. As a folks and Americana musician, No says political protest is essential to her artwork. She’s consistently determining how she will use her attain on and off tour to advertise reproductive, social and environmental justice — however her concepts aren’t at all times welcomed by folks on-line or within the music trade. OnlyFans, she says, gives an area the place she will share with out filters, and its status 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 advised the outlet hypebae the actual motive she opened an account is as a result of she received banned from Instagram for posting the sort of sexual content material she enjoys making.

No says it isn’t a coincidence that artists who’ve endured objectification within the music trade — notably Black girls 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 stunned 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 underneath which I can create radical, visionary Black artwork. In fact it should ruffle some folks’s feathers. That is what we’re up in opposition to as girls on this trade.”

Gig work and the creator financial system

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

Aryana Safaee is a sociology PhD scholar at SUNY Albany specializing in labor rights and the commodification of private connections. Her grasp’s thesis, titled Intercourse, Love, and OnlyFans, explored digital intercourse work as a labor concern. She says OnlyFans is uniquely positioned on the intersection of gig work and the creator financial system.

“OnlyFans is completely different from different gig work as a result of when you’re a DoorDash driver, you get despatched prospects to do deliveries for,” she says. “On OnlyFans, you’re answerable for discovering your personal subscribers. That is one of many greatest parts of unpaid labor that does not get mentioned: it’s important to have a preexisting platform for it to be economically viable for you.”

That is one motive musicians typically discover success on the platform; OnlyFans provides them a strategy 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 document by turning into the primary creator to earn $1 million in at some point. However after disillusioned prospects complained for refunds, OnlyFans introduced modifications to fee buildings, together with a $50 charging restrict for unique content material, a $100 cap on ideas and month-to-month relatively 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 had 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 staff 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 depend upon it as a major supply of revenue. “So getting abruptly banned or having their account frozen or they don’t seem to be in a position to withdraw — which 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 part of OnlyFans ought to take heed to how they will 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 might help elevate visibility for intercourse work as a labor concern.

“I feel 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 carried out 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 circumstances enhance within the music trade. She’s been a vocal supporter of a voluntary levy backed by the British authorities that may make investments £1 of each stadium or enviornment tour ticket bought into grassroots venues. Each No and Nash, who come from working class backgrounds, additionally emphasize how essential it’s for artists with out a 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 feel I am a fantastic instance to younger girls as a result of my total profession, I’ve put girls and ladies first and fought for them to have a spot within the music trade,” she says. “I need them to be paid pretty for his or her work. I need them to see a future. I need them to not be signed to a label after which simply advised to make TikToks all day. I need there to be sustainability and longevity.”