“Nothing. Zero. Nada. Didn’t care,” says Matt Thomson, frontman of rock band The Amazons. He’s speaking about his curiosity, or lack of it, in tax affairs and revenue streams when the group fashioned in Studying, Berkshire, in 2014. Three UK high 10 albums later, nevertheless, The Amazons’ singer has a distinct angle in the direction of monetary literacy. “In 2025, it’s all the things,” he remarks, with a touch of ruefulness.
No musician is drawn to a life in music to find out about dividend funds and tax submitting dates. However understanding how their funds work is nearly as vital in the long term as realizing their scales. The Amazons, whose identify was impressed by Arthur Ransome’s youngsters’s guide Swallows and Amazons, have been compelled to think about themselves as a enterprise, not in contrast to the net behemoth Amazon. “Very a lot so,” Thomson says, “which works towards my instincts.”
Twenty years in the past, a high 10 act would have earned a good quantity from document gross sales. However songs are primarily streamed nowadays, not bought. Although Spotify made worldwide royalty funds of £7.7bn in 2024, essentially the most within the platform’s historical past, complaints about low charges of return from streaming are rife. Compounding it is a collapse in touring revenues amid the price of residing disaster.
“Because the pandemic, for the center rung of touring musicians, the margins have simply acquired smaller and smaller,” Thomson says. “After which it’s important to issue within the pathetic streaming income that we will make. Each pound and penny counts. Within the years that you just’re not touring otherwise you’re not in an album cycle, you actually need to make it what you are promoting to know the place all the things goes.”
The 31-year-old and his two bandmates are at present busy with the marketing campaign for his or her forthcoming album, twenty first Century Fiction. “As a result of the margins have decreased for a band, we’ve got checked out just about each dimension, whether or not it’s crew or commissioning somebody to make a tour poster, and we’ve gone: Properly, these charges are going up, we’re not making the cash to pay for it, so we’ll need to study to do it ourselves,” he says.
Prior to now, bands turned companies on account of being profitable. The Beatles arrange their first firm, The Beatles Ltd, in 1963. It was created to decrease their tax invoice, two months after they obtained their first silver disc for the one “Please Please Me”. However musicians nowadays are sometimes suggested to include themselves as a primary step of their profession, earlier than the hoped-for hits begin climbing the charts.
“We needed to clarify to a few our artists the distinction between being a sole dealer and a personal restricted firm,” says Moe Bah of 5K Information, a Sony Music-affiliated label and administration firm. “If you wish to run it as an precise enterprise, then you definitely’re going to need to expense it and price it and do it in essentially the most environment friendly manner. Some artists can abide by that and perceive it and a few are only a bit extra uncontrollable, I might say.”
Bah and his 5K Information accomplice Kilo Jalloh are based mostly in London however run a world operation. West Africa’s booming music scene is a selected focus. Considered one of their greatest hits has been “Folks” by the US-Cameroonian singer Libianca, which charted internationally in 2023 after preliminary success in Nigeria. Their roster operates throughout totally different territories, every with distinct tax legal guidelines and income charges for streaming.
They need to arrange a division, Bah explains, “to supply artists help in easy methods to cope with receiving their first cheque or advance and put together them for taxes and budgeting. It’s crucial in the direction of constructing a long- time period profession. If an artist’s funds are usually not in test then how do you count on them to concentrate on the inventive facet?”
Jalloh laments the absence of economic literacy in music schooling, and UK colleges extra typically. “Particularly should you’re not from a privileged background, coming throughout giant quantities of cash is sort of a eureka second for an artist. It’s like, ‘This cash can set me up for all times.’ Nevertheless it’s not all theirs.” His recommendation to budding recording artists is succinct: “Get an accountant on board.”
Maybe essentially the most well-known, and definitely the grandest, monetary adviser in pop music was Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who managed the Rolling Stones’ cash till 2007. Within the guide In accordance with the Rolling Stones, he recalled taking over the function in 1968: “I used to be then a director of a small service provider financial institution and managed to influence my companions that the monetary issues of a distinguished rock band had been no totally different, in essence, from the issues of some other monetary organisation that sought recommendation within the Metropolis of London.”
Prince Rupert, a scion of Bavarian royalty, was employed by the business-minded, socially formidable Mick Jagger, a former finance and accounting pupil on the London Faculty of Economics. However it’s extra typical for a band or artist’s supervisor to level their shopper in the direction of the providers of a bean counter.
“For musicians, who may get advances or giant sums of money at totally different instances, precise monetary planning is kind of uncommon, particularly at a younger age. It’s not how regular individuals function,” says Paul Bonham of the Music Managers Discussion board, which represents about 1,500 managers within the UK. “Ideally, a supervisor and an artist would get accountant on the earliest stage potential.”
“When an artist will get their first advance, from publishing or a document deal, that’s actually when they should go to the holy trinity of accountant, lawyer and banker,” says Paul Morris of London-based leisure accountancy agency Hardwick and Morris. “Have they acquired the precise construction in place? Are they placing sufficient apart to cope with Rachel Reeves? Are they updated of their submitting? Are they doing all the precise issues when it comes to how they give the impression of being after their cash?”
His colleague Olivia Fuller reckons that immediately’s technology of musicians are a bit extra financially savvy than their predecessors. “They’re extra on the ball in retaining information than some individuals had been previously, handing in a bag of receipts months down the road. However I believe there’s nonetheless an absence of schooling about when they need to be doing it.”
The Amazons benefited from a useful accountant of their early days, based mostly at a agency in Slough — a far cry from Prince Rupert’s milieu. “He was simply sensible,” Thomson recollects. “He was this type of seven foot Dickensian character who simply put an arm round us. He knew nothing about music by any means, however he knew easy methods to make us tax environment friendly and intelligent with our cash.”
It took a few years for the band to begin incomes sufficient to pay themselves a daily wage (a few them have personal pensions). Throughout that point, Thomson labored in a grocery store. “I bear in mind all of us acquired £10,000 after we signed a document deal in 2016 and I used to be simply utterly beside myself,” he says. “I bear in mind my checking account, like: Oh my God, there’s £10,000 in there! It was a very wonderful second. After which I left my job stacking cabinets at Waitrose.”
They pool their earnings as a band. “It’s all about placing all of it within the pot and paying ourselves a gentle wage, as tax effectively as potential. That strategy utterly saved our bacon throughout Covid,” Thomson says.
In 2016, they started giving themselves a month-to-month wage of £500. The whole went up till the pandemic, then dropped, and has since climbed once more. In the meantime, their final album reached quantity 5 within the UK charts. “Shopping for a home is out of our grasp, even with high 10 information,” the band’s frontman says.
Amid all of the cost-cutting and belt-tightening, the underside line stays their music. “Fairly merely, cash is longevity,” Thomson says. “It’s about constructing fanbases over time. For that, you want cash. It’s the one technique to keep within the sport.”
Rappers change the beat on monetary abilities
Rappers are among the many most distinguished 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 financial institution 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 colleges.
The newest identify to enter the sphere is Rakim, a New York legend of hip-hop, famed for his silky verbal abilities and the basic albums that he made within the late Eighties and early Nineties with the producer Eric B. He has teamed with former rap artist-turned-entrepreneur DIVINE, in any other case referred to as Victor D Lombard, for a new app designed to assist musicians perceive their funds and discover funding.
Lombard joins me by video name from his house in Brooklyn. The app is his concept. Named Notes, it is because of launch subsequent month with freemium and premium tiers of membership. Its features embody entry to collectors, monetary instruments and schooling about how the music business operates. The supposed customers are “unbiased city music artists and creators”, in Lombard’s description.
“Once we take into consideration city music, we all know that these artists typically come from difficult backgrounds: they’re socioeconomically deprived,” Lombard says. “They’re inundated with all these potential income streams. For essentially the most half they’re simply exploited as a result of they don’t perceive how this technique works,”
Eric B. & Rakim was the primary hip-hop act to signal a $1mn document deal, following their prophetically titled 1987 debut album Paid in Full. “He graduates highschool and indicators his first document deal,” Lombard says of his Notes accomplice. “So think about who was making an attempt to get round him and what he needed to undergo.” If the pair’s app catches on, the subsequent technology of Rakims might not need to study the laborious manner.
