First Music Contact and Theatre Forum are working together to campaign for more sustainable careers for people working in the music industry and performing arts sector. In order to do this, we needed facts to support our case.
In February this year, we jointly put out a survey to research pay and conditions in the music industry and performing arts sector. Hundreds of you used your voices to provide us with an insight into your experiences so that we could inform our next steps. We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to this important survey. We know just how busy and over-extended you often are with your work, so we really appreciate you joining us in these efforts to improve everyone’s working conditions.
We have compiled the findings from this survey into a full report. This report gives an extensive, birdseye view of the very difficult conditions facing people working in the music industry and performing arts sector.
On review of the survey, which was undertaken by arts consultant Heather Maitland, Angela Dorgan (CEO, FMC) and Anna Walsh (Director, Theatre Forum) made the following joint statement:
“The results of the national Pay and Conditions Survey of the Music and Performing Arts Industries are extremely alarming. It is incredibly worrying that artists and workers in our sector are seeing decreased earnings while the majority of other industries are experiencing positive uplift. This cannot sustain.
What is crucial right now is increased financial support for local and national arts and cultural resource organisations, and those who make work with artists, who rely on Government investment to continue to produce arts by all, for all.
We speak of promoting the concept of a sustainable career in the arts and music, but we are careening towards a tipping point where this working life is becoming untenable. Already many have left the sector as they cannot afford to work in it and can no longer cope with the stress of precarious working conditions and the impacts that has on their lives and, for many, their dependents.
If we continue along this path, one which the arts community has trudged for decades, we will arrive in a cultural landscape devoid of diversity, where the artistic expression of the majority is silenced and access to arts is reduced significantly. Government cannot allow this to happen.
One beacon of light on the horizon is the positive impact emerging for those who are part of the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme, introduced by Minister Martin in late 2022. The Irish scheme, the first of its kind worldwide, has seen much debate and discourse within arts, media, cultural and governmental circles internationally, and ensures a basic income for professional artists and workers to counteract their lower than average and intermittent pay.
Emerging qualitative evidence suggests that the stability of a small but guaranteed income during the working process of making and creating art and music is having a positive impact on health and wellbeing, as well as enabling modest personal investments in health insurance, pensions and savings. These basics have been getting further and further out of reach for those working in arts and music. Basic Income allows people to work in the present, step towards self sustainability and plan for their future and the future of their families.”
While these findings are grave, together we can advocate for better. This report will shape and motivate the next steps we take to address these challenges. Support and engagement from across the sector will be essential as we take these important next steps.
You can read through the overview below or click the link below to read the full, detailed music sector report.
Please feel free to circulate this report amongst colleagues and coworkers to whom it may be of interest.
Again, we ask that you please continue to partner with and support us in taking action following this report, so we can advocate for better conditions for all, together. Thank you.
Stay tuned for more information as we take this opportunity to work together for better conditions:
Pay and Conditions in the Music Industry and Performing Arts Sector
The key findings of the first joint First Music Contact and Theatre Forum survey (Review of Pay and Conditions in the Music Industry 2022) are stark reminders that we must collectively tackle the issue of pay and conditions in the music industry and the performing arts sector if they are to be sustainable:
Musicians and Artists’ pay lower by a third than the average of all other employees
Musicians and Artists’ pay dropping more than any other sector
Pay gap is widening
Employment conditions are worsening
Implications
These factors are seriously impacting on the music industry and performing arts sector and the viability of a career as a musician, artist or arts worker in a variety of ways:
Musicians and artists leaving the sector
On one hand, low pay is forcing more than half of musicians and artists to take on multiple roles in the arts and entertainment sector. On the other, one third of artists and musicians reported that they are concerned that financial pressures will force them to leave the sector in the next six months. Inevitably, this will exacerbate the culture of overwork/self-subsidy/underpay as well as the chronic skills shortage, especially in production and technical roles.
Arts and entertainment sector being left behind
Considering the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase of 7.8% in 2022 compared to 2021, a fall of 1.8% in average weekly earnings in the arts and entertainment sector means that artists and musicians are being left further and further behind. Contrast this with the uplift of 10.8% in the public sector and an average of 2% increase in the private sector. It’s alarming that the gap in pay for musicians and artists and the private sector and public sectors is widening at this rate.
Low pay exacerbated by poor conditions
Low pay rates, working hours, poor conditions, few benefits, no pension provision, and with housing and healthcare unaffordable, earning a living as a musician and artist is impossible without significant personal sacrifice, a systemic problem that is having career, financial, personal, and health repercussions for too many people in the music industry and the performing arts.
Basic Income having a positive effect for musicians and artists in the scheme
On a positive note, there is considerable evidence in qualitative responses that Basic Income is having a positive impact on recipients, offering some basic security in an otherwise precarious career.
what next?
In the coming pre-Budget 2024 months, we should consistently and repeatedly make the case that both the retention and extension of the Basic Income scheme and funding increases are the basic measures needed to stabilise a sector where already-low pay levels have fallen even lower and poor conditions deteriorated further.
Arts Funding
Increased arts funding is needed if artists are to be paid properly. As musician and artists’ hourly earnings are probably even lower than national data suggests and the lowest of all sectors, ongoing Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases are going to further separate the music industry and performing arts with low pay and poor conditions from all other sectors. Increases in pay, fees and bursaries in every budget will be essential to pay and retain the musicians and artists on which IBEC’s Experience or Dream economy and the 2040 National Plan ideals of vibrant communities rely. In Section Three of Review of Pay and Conditions in the Performing Arts Sector in Ireland in 2022,you’ll find an overview of salaries, fees and rates in the sector as well as more detail to make the case for better pay.
Basic Income
The one-third less pay gap for musicians and artists compared to all other sectors makes roll-out of Basic Income for the Arts a necessity. We must call for Basic Income to be extended to provide musicians and artists with some basic security and for more funding and bursaries if musicians and artists are to make work and a living.
Employment framework
First Music Contact and Theatre Forum will explore how to develop an employment framework which guarantees income for creators and leverages the arts and culture as an accelerator of social, societal and environmental transitions (in support of a job-intensive and resilient economic model). In Section Three of Theatre Forum’s Pay and Conditions Report, you’ll find individual and organisation suggested responses to the sector’s employment challenges. The setting up of a stakeholder group to review our sectors employment structures to examine whether they are suited to assist the sector’s recovery post Covid are high on both organisation’s agendas. Both First Music Contact and Theatre Forum will continue to work together and look ahead to ensure employment in the music industry and performing arts is viable, careers are sustainable, and artists are supported to make, perform, and tour their work.
Making the case for better pay and conditions in the music industry and performing arts sector
In your funding applications and discussions with stakeholders, feel free to use the following information and charts to make the case for better and fairer employment frameworks in the music industry and performing arts sector.
Musicians and Artists pay lower by a third than the average of all other employees
The average weekly earnings for the arts and entertainment sector in the last quarter of 2022 were €582.36, 65% of the average (€900.26) for all employees.
Of great concern is that this is a 1.8% drop in the last quarter of 2021. While -1.8% is the biggest of the three sectors in which earnings declined, the fall for the other two sectors, Wholesale and retail trade at -1.1% and Professional, Scientific and Technical activities at -0.3%, are both smaller.
Figure 1: Quarter 4 average weekly earnings by economic sector 2017-2023
Musicians and Artists pay dropping more than any other sector
Of great concern is that average weekly earnings for the arts and entertainment sector saw a 1.8% drop in the last quarter of 2022. While -1.8% is the biggest of the three sectors in which earnings declined, the fall for the other two sectors, Wholesale and retail trade at -1.1% and Professional, Scientific and Technical activities at -0.3%, are both smaller.
Figure 2: Quarter 4 average weekly earnings in the public sector by subsector compared to the arts and entertainment sector 2017-2023.
Pay gap is widening
Considering the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase of 7.8% in 2022 compared to 2021, a fall of 1.8% in average weekly earnings in the arts and entertainment sector means that artists and musicians are being left further and further behind. Contrast this with the uplift of 10.8% in the public sector and an average of 2% increase in the private sector. It appears that pay for musicians and artists has become detached from everyone else in the private sector with public sector pay out of sight altogether.
Figure 3: Quarter 4 average weekly earnings in the private and public sectors compared to the arts and entertainment sector 2017-2023
Musicians and Artists likely to be in even worse position than official data suggests
Hourly earnings show a bleak picture too. Survey findings suggest median hourly earnings for the performing arts sector were €17.31 where 72% of respondents earned less than the national average hourly earnings and €15 in the music industry where 82% earned less than the national average. It suggests that these are lower than the national average hourly earnings recorded for the arts and entertainment sector as CSO Employment surveys are not completed by freelance artists and arts workers.
So, while national data shows earnings in the arts and entertainment as the second lowest, they are in fact closer to the accommodation and food services sector’s average of €15.33, consistently the lowest paid sector of all. And in the music industry, musicians’ earnings fall below that again.
Figure 4: Quarter 4 average hourly earnings by economic sector 2017-2023
Employment conditions worsening
Lowest of all pay rates along with working hours, poor conditions, few benefits, no pension provision, and with housing and healthcare unaffordable, mean that earning a living as a musician and artist is impossible without significant personal sacrifice, a systemic problem that is having career, financial, personal, and health repercussions for too many people in the music industry and the performing arts.
Figure 5: Quarter 4 average hourly earnings in the private and public sectors compared to the arts and entertainment sector 2017-2023
