Nearly half of working UK musicians earn less than £14,000, new census finds

‘The hours are unsociable, rehearsals are often unpaid’ … musicians have complained of a raft of issues in a new census. Photograph: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

A pioneering census of nearly 6,000 working musicians in the UK has found that nearly half earn less than £14,000 a year from their craft.

The first Musicians’ Census, a project it is hoped to repeat every three to five years, was created by the Musicians’ Union and the charity Help Musicians, which used a series of industry partners to try to reach as many respondents as possible.