Why it’s nearly impossible to make money as a musician in 2024 (unless you’re Taylor Swift).
On a hot summer night in downtown Manhattan, Raye was exhausted and excited. The British pop singer had just finished a series of performances of her new single “Genesis” as small groups of devoted fans cycled in and out of the Conrad hotel. She’d barely stepped off the stage before a member of her team handed her a plaque to commemorate the sale of 2 million US copies of her 2022 single “Escapism.”
By nearly any metric, the 27-year-old singer and songwriter is a star on the rise: 2 million Instagram followers, 27 million monthly Spotify listeners, three Grammy nominations, a single-year-record six Brit Awards, a writing credit on Beyoncé’s most recent album, and coveted performance slots at Coachella, “Saturday Night Live,” and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
But in 2024, artists who want a sustainable career can’t survive on talent or even fame alone. They now have to strategically post on social media, design cost-efficient tours, and navigate the complex web of legal and financial bureaucracy necessary for their work. And oftentimes, even that’s not enough to turn a profit.
“We’re breaking even and it’s beautiful,” Raye says in one of the Conrad’s many boardrooms, one hand resting casually on her plaque.
Music has always been a business, but streaming, TikTok, inflation, and the ballooning costs of touring have dramatically altered a musician’s traditional routes to making money.
Even the world-famous billionaire musician Taylor Swift has acknowledged she can’t focus on songwriting alone to build her career. “I’m sick and tired of having to pretend like I don’t mastermind my own business,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019.
“You’ve got this democratization of the music business where there’s not the same barrier for entry. The problem is that everybody’s got that access,” says Donald Passman, a veteran music lawyer who is the author of the music-industry bible “All You Need to Know About the Music Business.”
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“The real challenge for artists now is to get yourself an audience before you go to a label, if you decide to go to a label at all,” Passman adds. “You’ve got to do it yourself.”
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