Can OnlyFans save the music industry?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

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4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Concert tickets are more expensive than ever, and according to Live Nation, 2023 was the biggest year ever for concert turnout and ticket sales. So why are indie artists turning to OnlyFans to pay the bills?

This is PART ONE of our new series, Money Troubles.

And for the next few weeks, we're looking into the ways everyday people are trying to make ends meet... and what it says about how our culture views labor, basic needs, and even our favorite pastimes.

In this episode, Brittany sits down with NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento to get into the economic factors driving musicians to digital sex work and what that says about the music industry's dwindling middle class.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out?
0:03.6	Well, don't sweat it.
0:04.6	The NPR Politics Podcast makes politics a breeze.
0:08.2	Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language
0:12.5	and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you.
0:17.4	Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast,
0:22.2	available wherever you get your podcasts.
0:27.0	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:31.9	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:47.6	Do you all remember this line from Megan the Stallion's Savage remix?
0:50.0	Hips tick-tok when I dance.
0:52.7	On that demon time, she might start her only fan.
0:58.7	At the time, this was just a cheeky line from Beyonce about the meteoric rise of OnlyFans during lockdown.
1:06.4	For those of you who are out of the loop, OnlyFans is a subscription or pay-per-view-based social media platform.
1:13.6	It's mostly known for sex work, as many adult stars and performers have moved to the app to create and upload content on their own terms, but it's also become an avenue for music artists to share exclusive content.
1:18.6	Over the years, there's been lots of people, Cardi B, Rico Nasty, Lily Allen, who have joined Onlyfans, and not all of them have shared nude content.
1:26.6	The British artist, Shy Girl, was the first artist to premiere a music video on OnlyFans, and not all of them have shared nude content. The British artist, Shy Girl, was the first artist to premiere a music video on Onlyfans.
1:31.7	So there is some sort of, like, blurring of lines of what musicians are on there for.
1:36.8	That is NPR Culture Reporter, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
1:40.4	She recently wrote a piece about musicians on Onlyfans,
1:43.0	and she found that while big stars often use it to give a behind-the-scenes look into their creative process, smaller independent artists have turned to sex work on only fans to pay the bills.
1:53.7	British singer-songwriter Kit Nash, who's been making music for almost two decades, she joined in November, and it was, so much judgment being thrown around about her choosing to do this.
	...

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