Despite being one of the biggest contributors to the UK economy (contributing more than the whole of the agriculture sector) Over half (56%) of the musicians in the UK earn less than £20k, with one in five earning less than £10k from working as a musician, myself being one. It is now unrealistic that artists in this country can support themselves alone and now needs sponsorship to make creativity possible, 60% of musicians report of having to work for free in the past 12 months.

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Whilst researching for crowdfunding I read an article from the musicians union (https://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/Files/Reports/Industry/The-Working-Musician-report) which shows the reality of life as a working musician, and the financial challenges we face. A staggering 78% of musicians (all of whom experienced, full-time, qualified professionals) are earning a gross annual income of less than £30k and for the one in three musicians (35%) earning between £10k and £20k, 42% have a degree and 58% have more than 10 years experience. Two thirds of musicians (65%) undertake four years or more of formal education and training with 40% holding a degree in music.  Income levels compare unfavourably to other professionals who’ve invested similar amounts of time and money into education and training.

 

There is no such thing as a typical musician. The blend of roles, patterns of paid and creative work, employment status and working hours vary across musicians and across different periods in their careers. Developing a portfolio career, made up of a number of different jobs, is a necessary characteristic of many musicians’ careers; this invariably involves developing non-music skills such as business, marketing, teaching and community engagement. 

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I have reached a turning point in my career that I need to reach out for help to achieve my full potential. I have many exciting projects that I wish to give to the world, but are prevented by a lack of funding. My creative ambitions are to release two albums featuring my love of both jazz and classical music. I would like to showcase my jazz trio with Stefan Melovski and Olly Sarkar and a classical album with my accompanist Irina Lyakhovskya. Both of these projects have a list of expenditures to meet, considering: hiring a venue, a sound engineer and their equipment, videographer and their editing for online promotion, all of which being hurdles stopping me bring music to the world. On top of this I simply cannot expect my colleagues to work for free and would need to raise funds to pay them union rates to set a precedent that music is a highly valued skill.

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My academic endeavours as a musicologist lie with the Bottesini Urtext project. Processing the vast amount of information by myself is nigh impossible and so hiring others to deal with the digitisation is essential. This project has been completely self-funded with the aim to bring back lost music to the public, who Bottesini intended it for and to help protect Bottesini's manuscripts by creating digital versions. All this research into Bottesini also is culminating into a book about his travels and life when he visited the UK but the cost of compiling all these resources and hiring legal help to manage copyright is stopping the project.

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If you are able to help in anyway, please make any donations to my paypal via the email smsbass@hotmail.com I will be eternally grateful!