‘The music industry could really learn from the sex industry’ – Kate Nash

Singer Kate Nash has said she believes the music industry can “learn a lot from the sex industry”.

The musician announced on Thursday that her OnlyFans income will help to subsidise her shows.

Nash, who started her UK dates in Glasgow on Thursday, told LBC: “I’ve started an OnlyFans account and I’m selling pictures of my arse because I think that’s quite funny. And you know, I do find it empowering.

“I think sex work is really empowering. I think that women being in control of what they’re selling is really empowering.

“I mean in the past 72 hours I’ve had so many more conversations about ethics, consent, what I’m willing to do, what I’m not willing to do.

“People really wanting to pay me for things, asking me questions, there’s like boundaries and control that I don’t think artists are taught when they enter the industry from the music business.

“I think the music industry could really learn from the sex industry and I know a lot of people are also exploited in the sex industry as well.”

Nash previously told the BBC she was losing money from her tours and claimed her OnlyFans income will subsidise her shows because, according to her Instagram, “touring makes losses not profits”.

When asked why she felt being a musician was no longer a financially viable career, she told LBC: “The cost of touring has gone up. Just like the cost-of-living crisis, there’s a cost-of-touring crisis – where the cost of travel, accommodation, crew wages, bus rental, all the things that you need to pay for when you go on tour, everything’s gone up.

“But a lot of bands’ and artists’ fees for gigs have not gone up, whereas ticket prices have gone up.”

She added: “There’s a big disparity between artists – where we even have billionaire musicians, but the majority of musicians are not billionaires and millionaires.

“The major labels and streaming companies and massive promotion companies have decided how things are going to be and they haven’t decided to value musicians or give them a fair cut of those deals.”

When asked about a potential lack of equality on OnlyFans, she said there was “a lack of equality in every single industry that everyone’s worked in”.

She added: “There’s a lot of interesting niche things about the sex industry, too. And there’s a lot of open-minded people that people are turned on by lots of different things.

“So I’m not sure that people are attracted to different things too. And there’s a lot of really amazing feminist queer people creating interesting feminist queer sex work for sale.

“And there’s a lot of feminists and queer people that want to also watch adult films or… I mean, I’m not making adult films but there’s like a massive spectrum in sex work, right?

“But there is inequality, as you say, in every single industry. This is sort of a punk protest that I’m making. If I had posted a picture of me at a gig and I said: ‘I’m going on tour and it’s really hard touring right now’, I don’t think I would be here. I don’t think I’d be on the front page of Reddit. I don’t think that I would into the BBC.”

Nash also called for a “drastic change” to what she deemed to be “quite an exploitative industry”.

She said: “We need drastic change. We need HR departments, we need fair wages. I have had lots of experience of being exploited.

“I’m getting a lot of attention for doing this. I have a name that’s recognisable. I can attract attention. I don’t feel I have power to make real change in the business. But this. Doing this is empowering me. And they’re two separate things as well.

“And they’re not to sort of be conflated that you know, sending pictures of my bum is funny and fun and enjoyable and sexy and like, all these different things.

“I think that there’s a lot of comedy in it. There’s a punk protest in it, and then there’s fun and there’s too much shame surrounding sex and sex work. And people will raise eyebrows and have judgments, but that’s part of the fun as well.

“And that’s part of, like encouraging people to sort of just loosen up and like lose shame around their bodies and they want to do with their bodies and sex and pleasure.”

Nash has just finished a three-week US tour and started her UK dates in Glasgow on Thursday.

She will then move on to Europe. Her date at London’s Koko is sold out.