Concert tickets are more expensive than ever, and according to Live Nation, 2023 was the biggest year ever for concert turnout and ticket sales. So why are indie artists turning to OnlyFans to pay the bills? This is PART ONE of our new series, Money Troubles. And for the next few weeks, we're looking into the ways everyday people are trying to make ends meet... and what it says about how our culture views labor, basic needs, and even our favorite pastimes. In this episode, Brittany sits down with NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento to get into the economic factors driving musicians to digital sex work and what that says about the music industry's dwindling middle class.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Do you all remember this line from Megan Thee Stallion's Savage remix?
At the time, this was just a cheeky line from Beyonce about the meteoric rise of OnlyFans during lockdown. For those of you who are out of the loop, OnlyFans is a subscription or pay-per-view based social media platform. It's mostly known for sex work, as many adult stars and performers have moved to the app to create and upload content on their own terms.
But it's also become an avenue for music artists to share exclusive content.
Over the years, there's been lots of people, Cardi B, Rico Nasty, Lily Allen, who have joined OnlyFans, and not all of them have shared nude content. The British artist Shy Girl was the first artist to premiere a music video on OnlyFans. So there is some sort of like blurring of lines of what musicians are on there for.
That is NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. She recently wrote a piece about musicians on OnlyFans, and she found that while big stars often use it to give a behind-the-scenes look, into their creative process. Smaller independent artists have turned to sex work on OnlyFans to pay the bills.
British singer-songwriter Kate Nash, who's been making music for almost two decades, she joined in November and it was like so much judgment being thrown around about her choosing to do this. And it kind of seemed like the big question that was being evaded was like, well, why is an artist like her needing to supplement her income in the first place?
And while artists doing sex work is not a new thing, what is new, at least to me, is why they're doing it.
Because of streaming and because of what some people are calling the cost of touring crisis, we're seeing more and more musicians turn to OnlyFans and turn to digital sex work as a way to supplement the income that they feel they're not adequately getting from recording music and from touring.
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