How do musicians make money? Every income stream, honestly

How do musicians make money? Every income stream, from streams and royalties to gigs, merch and fan subscriptions, with a reality check on each.

How do musicians make money? From a mix: gigs, merch, streams and sales, songwriting and radio royalties, fans who pay directly, and usually a job on the side. Streaming is the one everyone asks about, so start by checking what yours pay in the Spotify royalty calculator.

The side job isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong, as the numbers below show. Here’s how much musicians make, then each income stream with a quick reality check.

How much do musicians make?

In the UK the average income from music is £20,700 a year, and 43% of musicians earn less than £14,000 from it. Those figures come from the first Musicians’ Census, run by Help Musicians in 2023. Two things to bear in mind:

  • It’s an average, not a median. A few high earners pull an average up, so the typical musician makes less than £20,700.
  • Most people top it up. 53% keep their music career going with other income, mostly other jobs. The ones who earn everything from music average around £30,000.

Streaming pays less than most people expect. The UK competition regulator, the CMA, found that in 2021, 12 million UK streams a year earned a major-label artist about £12,000, and fewer than 1% of artists got that many. Over 60% of all streams went to the top 0.4% of artists.

Streams and sales of your recordings

Every stream earns a small payment to whoever owns the recording. If you release through a distributor, that’s you. If you’re signed, the label collects it and pays you a royalty.

Reality check: recordings earned an average of $3.41 per 1,000 streams across the big services in 2024, according to Duetti. It adds up slowly.

Songwriting and radio royalties

If you wrote the song, you’re owed separate money every time it’s streamed, played on the radio or performed live. If you performed on a recording that gets radio play, there’s another pot for that. All of it is explained in music royalties, including the radio money known as neighbouring rights.

Reality check: none of this arrives unless you register with the right collecting societies. Plenty of independent artists never do.

Gigs and touring

Gigs bring in ticket money or a fee, plus merch sales on the night, and they’re where new fans find you.

Reality check: costs can swallow it. Bands, crew, vans, fuel and hotels add up fast, and plenty of tours lose money. The numbers are in how much artists make on tour.

Merch

T-shirts, vinyl, tote bags, anything with your name on it. For a lot of artists, merch is what turns a break-even gig into a paid one.

Reality check: many venues take a cut of what you sell at the show. Reports put it at 15–35% of merch sales. The Featured Artists Coalition runs a 100% Venues list of places that take nothing, so check it before you book.

Selling direct to fans

Selling downloads, vinyl and merch online means you set the price and keep most of it. Bandcamp, for example, takes 15% of digital sales and 10% of merch, as NME reported in 2020.

Reality check: one $10 album sale pays as much as thousands of streams, but you need fans who’ll buy. We compare the two in Bandcamp vs Spotify.

Fan subscriptions

Some musicians make a steady income from fans paying monthly for early tracks, demos and behind-the-scenes posts. Research from the University of Sussex in 2024 found artists making it work without being famous.

Reality check: it’s real work. The same research found artists acting as their own promoter, some fans downloading everything and cancelling, and a risk in depending on one platform. There’s a rundown of the options in alternatives to Patreon.

Everything else

  • Sync: fees when your music goes in a film, advert, TV show or game. Hard to get, but one placement can beat a year of streams.
  • Session and live work: playing on other people’s records and gigs.
  • Teaching: lessons, workshops and online courses.
  • Unusual routes: Kate Nash opened an OnlyFans account in late 2024 to pay her tour bills, and said it covered them within days.

Next step

Work out what your streams bring in with the Spotify royalty calculator. If you write with other people, agree who owns what on a split sheet before the song comes out. For the wider picture, browse our music royalties and pay guides.

Where these figures come from

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