Sydney musicians tell of life in survival game with shrinking income
When you became a successful blues and soul singer Karen Lee Andrews When asked to describe her life as a musician during a parliamentary inquiry into live music, she burst into tears as she recalled her last grant application being rejected and having to work in a supermarket to make ends meet.
“I have been a professional musician for the last few decades,” Andrews said in a statement Tuesday. “When I was working in retail I was getting hired for festivals and doing my own sold out tours and then COVID hit. I was very lucky to get a job at Woolworths at the time and then after coming out of COVID I didn’t get hired at festivals as much because festivals were closing down.”
Sydney musicians bared their souls for an inquiry in the NSW Parliament on Tuesday, detailing how they lived “day-to-day, hand-to-mouth”.
soul singer Declan Kelly Since the concerts had a payment guarantee, he would often sing covers in the back corner of “pokies bars” for $300. Says pubs use Labour’s vitality reform Incentive to earn extra trading hours by hosting live music.
“I’ve actually… played in these places; you’re backed into a corner, nobody cares and you’re just there… [to] We grab a guitar and go sing for our dinner. We prefer to sing our own songs because we have been making our own songs since forever but we will go and sing Brown Eyed Girl For one, it’s because they pay the money.
Despite the Effort $103 million promised for live music over four years in 2023Musicians were asked about the breadth of funding grants at a time when their industry is facing threats from artificial intelligence, declining revenue streams, a cost-of-living crisis and audiences consuming foreign music on streaming services.
Professionally known folk-pop musician Alex Lynn Astronaut Alexhe laughs when someone asks them if they’re considering buying a house. “Because of course not, I can’t,” they said.
Lynn earns a “meager wage” by working three days a week at Sydney Children’s Hospital, which provides arts and entertainment programs alongside her professional career. The loss of festivals such as Bluesfest and Splendor in the Grass and Falls Festival also contributed to the decline in musicians’ incomes.
“A band my size gets paid about $20,000 per festival. At three festivals, you have enough money for the next record, then you have a little left over to pay yourself, a little left over to pay your crew, and a little left over to plan a tour,” Lynn said.
“That’s $60,000 – any living income is completely gone now. If you take $60,000 from any small business, when that’s 80 percent of their income … that business can’t operate.”
Lynn said discussions about how streaming algorithms should work, whether through government imposition of local music targets or requests from platforms like Spotify, Apple and Amazon, often end up with a 22-minute outcome.
“[Before COVID] In Australia, when you enter a playlist on Spotify, there is a built-in audience, so the song reaches thousands more people just because it is on your profile… Whereas now the narrowing down of those playlists by geography means we don’t have access to those thousands of people. [previously] “It was an option,” they said.
According to the 2024 Luminate report, only 8 per cent of the top 10,000 artists streamed in Australia as of September 2024 were Australian musicians. More than half of the artists released were from the United States.
“My feed dropped during COVID from what I thought was a bad number at 250,000 followers, and then it went down and down and down and now I’m at 45,000,” Lynn said. “It used to be unsustainable, and now it’s only $100 a month, even if you have songs with millions of listeners.”
Zoe Catterall, one of four members of the alternative rock band buoysHe told the inquiry that product sales were one of the group’s last profitable forms of income after the pandemic, but that stream had all but dried up due to rising costs.
“I haven’t made a profit on the product in over two years,” Catterall said. “That was our main source of income, outside of touring, when we were touring we thought it was okay; we still have merch, but we’re watching all those revenue streams completely disappear and they’re going to fund our recording projects.”
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Kayla Olaya is a culture reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
