Last week, British singer-songwriter Kate Nash launched an OnlyFans account with her "Butts 4 Tour Buses" campaign to help cover the costs of being on the road. Now, she and her "bum on the back of a fire truck" have upped the ante by protesting outside the Live Nation and Spotify offices in London.
"You thought that I was done with bum stunts? Well, I'm a middle child — I don't stop until we've drawn blood," she joked in an Instagram Story. "Here's my bum on the back of a fire truck, and here's my bum in real life. I'm gonna give them hell."
The artist and the firetruck first visited the London Live Nation office, where she brought up the fact that the entertainment mega-corporation made £22.749 billion last year — a 36.38 percent increase from the year prior. "Live Nation are the main hold-up in the government's recommendation to give £1 per arena and stadium ticket to the grassroots [venues], who are in crisis," Nash said.
Outside the Spotify building, she added, "Artists are paid 0.003 [percent] of a penny per stream whilst [Spotify] demonetized 80 percent of music on the platform," referring to the streaming platform's 2023 move to demonetize songs with less than 1,000 streams.
In a statement to NME, Nash reaffirmed that "the cost of presenting live music has gone up by 30.3 percent over the past two years. There were 125 venues that closed last year in the UK. And, the value of recorded music is extremely low."
"The industry is in crisis, the music industry has failed artists, and is completely unsustainable — and my arse is shining a light on that," she continued. "And none would be listening if my bum wasn't involved. This is a conversation about agency. And selling pictures of my bum is giving me the agency to reinvest in my creative economy. The music industry does not give me that agency."