“Nothing. Zero. Nada. Didn’t care,” says Matt Thomson, frontman of rock band The Amazons. He’s speaking about his hobby, or insufficiency of it, in tax affairs and source of revenue streams when the crowd shaped in Studying, Berkshire, in 2014. 3 UK govern 10 albums next, alternatively, The Amazons’ singer has a distinct angle in opposition to monetary literacy. “In 2025, it’s everything,” he remarks, with a touch of ruefulness.
Deny musician is attracted to a while in song to be informed about dividend bills and tax submitting dates. However working out how their budget paintings is nearly as remarkable ultimately as understanding their scales. The Amazons, whose identify used to be impressed by means of Arthur Ransome’s kids’s keep Swallows and Amazons, had been forced to think about themselves as a office, now not in contrast to the net behemoth Amazon. “Very much so,” Thomson says, “which goes against my instincts.”
Two decades in the past, a govern 10 office would have earned a worthy quantity from document gross sales. However songs are basically streamed at the present time, now not bought. Even though Spotify made international royalty bills of £7.7bn in 2024, essentially the most within the platform’s historical past, proceedings about low charges of go back from streaming are rife. Compounding it is a faint in traveling revenues amid the price of dwelling emergency.
“Since the pandemic, for the middle rung of touring musicians, the margins have just got smaller and smaller,” Thomson says. “And then you have to factor in the pathetic streaming revenue that we can make. Every pound and penny counts. In the years that you’re not touring or you’re not in an album cycle, you really have to make it your business to know where everything is going.”
The 31-year-old and his two bandmates are these days busy with the marketing campaign for his or her coming near near brochure, twenty first Century Fantasy. “Because the margins have decreased for a band, we have looked at pretty much every dimension, whether it’s crew or commissioning someone to make a tour poster, and we’ve gone: Well, those fees are going up, we’re not making the money to pay for it, so we’ll have to learn to do it ourselves,” he says.
Within the pace, bands become companies because of being a success. The Beatles arrange their first corporate, The Beatles Ltd, in 1963. It used to be created to decrease their tax invoice, two months nearest they gained their first silver disc for the only “Please Please Me”. However musicians at the present time are frequently prompt to include themselves as a primary step of their profession, sooner than the hoped-for hits get started hiking the charts.
“We had to explain to a couple of our artists the difference between being a sole trader and a private limited company,” says Moe Bah of 5K Information, a Sony Song-affiliated label and control corporate. “If you want to run it as an actual business, then you’re going to have to expense it and cost it and do it in the most efficient way. Some artists can abide by that and understand it and some are just a bit more uncontrollable, I would say.”
Bah and his 5K Information spouse Kilo Jalloh are founded in London however run a world operation. West Africa’s booming song scene is a specific center of attention. One among their largest hits has been “People” by means of the US-Cameroonian singer Libianca, which charted across the world in 2023 nearest preliminary luck in Nigeria. Their roster operates throughout other territories, each and every with distinct tax regulations and income charges for streaming.
They need to arrange a area, Bah explains, “to offer artists assistance in how to deal with receiving their first cheque or advance and prepare them for taxes and budgeting. It’s very important towards building a long- term career. If an artist’s finances are not in check then how do you expect them to focus on the creative side?”
Jalloh laments the absence of monetary literacy in song training, and UK faculties extra typically. “Especially if you’re not from a privileged background, coming across large amounts of money is like a eureka moment for an artist. It’s like, ‘This money can set me up for life.’ But it’s not all theirs.” His recommendation to budding recording artists is succinct: “Get an accountant on board.”
In all probability essentially the most well-known, and unquestionably the grandest, monetary assistant in pop song used to be Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who controlled the Rolling Stones’ cash till 2007. Within the keep In step with the Rolling Stones, he recalled taking at the function in 1968: “I was then a director of a small merchant bank and managed to persuade my partners that the financial problems of a prominent rock band were no different, in essence, from the problems of any other financial organisation that sought advice in the City of London.”
Prince Rupert, a scion of Bavarian royalty, used to be leased by means of the business-minded, socially enthusiastic Mick Jagger, a former finance and accounting pupil on the London College of Economics. However it’s extra conventional for a band or artist’s supervisor to indicate their consumer in opposition to the products and services of a bean counter.
“For musicians, who might get advances or large sums of cash at different times, actual financial planning is quite unusual, especially at a young age. It’s not how normal people operate,” says Paul Bonham of the Song Managers Discussion board, which represents about 1,500 managers in the United Kingdom. “Ideally, a manager and an artist would get a good accountant at the earliest stage possible.”
“When an artist gets their first advance, from publishing or a record deal, that’s really when they need to go to the holy trinity of accountant, lawyer and banker,” says Paul Morris of London-based leisure accountancy company Hardwick and Morris. “Have they got the right structure in place? Are they putting enough aside to deal with Rachel Reeves? Are they up to date in their filing? Are they doing all the right things in terms of how they look after their money?”
His associate Olivia Fuller reckons that as of late’s moment of musicians are just a little extra financially savvy than their predecessors. “They’re more on the ball in keeping records than some people were in the past, handing in a bag of receipts months down the line. But I think there’s still a lack of education about when they should be doing it.”
The Amazons benefited from a useful accountant of their early days, founded at a company in Slough — a a long way yell from Prince Rupert’s milieu. “He was just brilliant,” Thomson recollects. “He was this kind of seven foot Dickensian character who just put an arm around us. He knew nothing about music whatsoever, but he knew how to make us tax efficient and clever with our money.”
It took a few years for the band to begin incomes enough quantity to pay themselves a habitual salary (a few them have non-public pensions). Right through that life, Thomson labored in a grocery store. “I remember we all got £10,000 when we signed a record deal in 2016 and I was just completely beside myself,” he says. “I remember looking at my bank account, like: Oh my God, there’s £10,000 in there! It was a really amazing moment. And then I left my job stacking shelves at Waitrose.”
They pond their income as a band. “It’s all about putting it all in the pot and paying ourselves a steady wage, as tax efficiently as possible. That approach completely saved our bacon during Covid,” Thomson says.
In 2016, they started giving themselves a per 30 days salary of £500. The entire went up till the pandemic, nearest dropped, and has since climbed once more. In the meantime, their latter brochure reached quantity 5 in the United Kingdom charts. “Buying a house is out of our grasp, even with top 10 records,” the band’s frontman says.
Amid the entire cost-cutting and belt-tightening, the base series left-overs their song. “Quite simply, money is longevity,” Thomson says. “It’s about building fanbases over time. For that, you need money. It’s the only way to stay in the game.”
Rappers exchange the beat on monetary abilities
Rappers are a few of the maximum well-known musical advocates for monetary literacy. Kendrick Lamar joined billionaire investor Ray Dalio in 2022 for a marketing campaign known as That’s Cash. Killer Mike is the co-founder of an Atlanta storehouse named Greenwood that counteracts debanking in African-American communities. And British rapper Stormzy’s publishing imprint #Merky Books has partnered with HSBC to show monetary abilities in UK faculties.
The unedited identify to go into the farmland is Rakim, a Brandnew York legend of hip-hop, famed for his silky verbal abilities and the vintage albums that he made within the past due Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties with the manufacturer Eric B. He has teamed with former rap artist-turned-entrepreneur DIVINE, differently referred to as Victor D Lombard, for a new app designed to assistance musicians perceive their budget and in finding investment.
Lombard joins me by means of video name from his house in Brooklyn. The app is his thought. Named Notes, it’s because of initiation after presen with freemium and top rate tiers of club. Its purposes come with get entry to to collectors, monetary gear and training about how the song business operates. The meant customers are “independent urban music artists and creators”, in Lombard’s description.
“When we think about urban music, we know that these artists often come from challenging backgrounds: they’re socioeconomically disadvantaged,” Lombard says. “They’re inundated with all these potential revenue streams. For the most part they’re easily exploited because they don’t understand how this system works,”
Eric B. & Rakim used to be the primary hip-hop office to signal a $1mn document do business in, following their prophetically titled 1987 debut brochure Paid in Complete. “He graduates high school and signs his first record deal,” Lombard says of his Notes spouse. “So imagine who was trying to get around him and what he had to go through.” If the pair’s app catches on, the after moment of Rakims won’t have to be informed the dehydrated method.
