Kate Nash on turning to OnlyFans: ‘My bum is for sale – my artistic vision isn’t’
Kate Nash has a message for critics: “Not all heroes wear capes. Some just sell pictures of their bum.”
The singer’s bum jokes pepper the conversation, but her arse – as she says – highlights a very serious point. “The music industry is failing. It’s failing its artists, and soon it’s going to be failing fans, too.”
If you’re not sure why Kate Nash’s bottom is now an emblem for saving the music industry, a recap: last week, the singer announced she had joined OnlyFans, the online adult content subscription service popular with, but not exclusively for, sex workers.
#ButtsForTourBuses, Nash said, will subsidise her live shows, which are becoming prohibitively expensive for many artists.
Pic: Clemens Niehaus/Geisler-Fotopres/picture-alliance/dpa/AP 2019
Fans are supportive, she tells Sky News, but her (mostly covered) bottom has faced criticism: “I’ve been called apocalyptic and a prostitute, which is outdated – it’s sex worker – but I’ll take ‘apocalyptic prostitute’ because it’s quite an epic title. To me, the idea of a country with no grassroots, no working-class people in music, no [smaller] venues, only stadiums – that’s apocalyptic.”
Last year, a Musicians’ Union and Help Musicians census found musicians’ average income was £20,700, compared to a population average of £37,430 for full-time workers. But almost half the musicians who responded were taking home less than £14,000, and more than half relying on other sources of income.
Industry insiders say even established names are having to take on second jobs.
Nash, 37, is an established artist who rose to fame with her 2007 debut album Made Of Bricks, and its hit single Foundations. She starred in the Netflix female wrestling comedy-drama Glow, released her fifth album, 9 Sad Symphonies, earlier this year, and has almost a million monthly listeners on Spotify.
When we speak, she is in the middle of a run of UK gigs at venues up to 1,500 capacity. She considered cancelling after tours in the US and Europe left her struggling financially. Costs have gone up by almost a third in recent years, she says.
More than 100 venues were forced to close or stop hosting live music in 2023
“It’s a financial strain and everybody at my level and under is feeling that. You just lose so much money touring.”
To make up for the shortfall, Nash has sent her posterior viral. Her first photo on 20 November gained hundreds of likes. The pictures show her in her knickers, nothing explicit. “This is what a feminist looks like,” is her t-shirt slogan in one image.
A subscription is $9.99 (about £7.95) a month. The singer doesn’t want to reveal yet how much she has earned but says it has already made up for any losses she incurred on tour.
“I’ll just say you can make a surprising amount… right now it’s just for me to see what happens – and see how far my arse can take me.”
Lily Allen has shared pictures of her feet. Pic: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP 2024
The musician is not the first to turn to OnlyFans. Rappers Iggy Azalea and Cardi B reportedly made millions before coming off the site, and earlier this year, Lily Allen claimed her account selling pictures of her feet was earning more than her seven million-plus monthly Spotify listeners.
OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetise images and videos online in a safe environment. In 2021, actress Sarah Jayne Dunn, who was starring in Hollyoaks at the time, joined the site to do just this – but was then dropped from the soap as the content didn’t align with its younger demographic.
And there has been criticism over the potential for exploitation – a recent Reuters investigation talked to women who claimed they had been forced to make money for others.
But like Nash, Allen said she found the experience empowering, “because having been very sexualised from a very early age and literally everybody else in the process profiting from that sexualisation, it’s actually really fun to be in power and in control of something that I find so silly”.
Actress Sarah Jayne Dunn left Hollyoaks after joining OnlyFans. Pic: Brett Cove/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Nash says she wanted to be honest about the difficulties of touring. Just a few weeks ago, BBC Sound Of nominee and NME award winner Rat Boy announced he was cancelling his band’s UK tour, saying they couldn’t make it affordable, “even with us driving, teching and all four of us sharing a single bed on top of the van”.
Singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri, who is supporting Sabrina Carpenter’s UK and European tour dates next year, also cancelled a series of US dates due to costs. In the summer, Mercury Prize nominee Nadine Shah said she turned down a slot at Glastonbury as it was “too expensive a hit”.
Brexit, the pandemic and now the cost of living crisis have impacted everyone, but experts say the music industry has been hit particularly hard.
Sarah Pearson, who has worked in the industry for 25 years, runs management and PR agency Wasted Youth Music and is co-founder of the Beyond The Music co-operative. She says many artists have recently had no choice but to take on other work.
“Fans and consumers and people outside of the industry might think it’s a glamorous life… but it’s just not true [for most] anymore,” she says.
“We’re at an impasse right now where artists can’t make money from their art, which is serious for our cultural future. Where is the money going to come from and how can we create sustainable careers?”
English Teacher won the 2024 Mercury Prize. Pic: PA
In March, singer Lily Fontaine, from this year’s Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, spoke in parliament about the “ongoing crisis”, alongside David Martin, chief executive of the Featured Artists Coalition trade body.
“Audiences are finding their purses are very tight and they can’t afford ticket price increases, they’re scaling back,” says Martin. “On the supply side, costs are going up. Artists are the biggest employers in the music industry. On the live side, artists pay for practically everything – accommodation, transport, rehearsals, session musicians… managers, crew, technicians, agents.”
According to the Music Venues Trust, 125 venues were forced to close or stop hosting live music in 2023 due to costs. So far this year, more than 70 festivals have closed.
But a recent report found that UK music’s contribution to the economy in 2023 hit a record £7.6bn, with exports also hitting a new high of £4.6bn – so there is money to be made.
“There are real issues about how artists have been locked into contracts that were perhaps signed before the digital era,” says Martin. “There is money in the system. It just needs to be distributed equitably.”
Kate Nash on OnlyFans. Pic: Emily Marcovecchio
Read more:
Inside the UK’s music festival crisis
‘There is no HR department in the music industry‘
Earlier this month, the government announced plans to push through a voluntary levy on tickets for concerts at stadiums and arenas to help fund grassroots venues.
It’s a “massive step”, says Beyond The Music’s Pearson, but help is also needed for other areas of the industry such as recorded music, too: “There needs to be a massive cross-industry investment fund… something like the Football Foundation where the Premier League clubs invest in the grassroots to develop and nurture talent for the future of the sport.”
Some household names have kicked things off themselves, with Coldplay pledging to donate 10% of profits to help smaller venues, and Katy Perry giving £1 for every ticket sold, from their arena and stadium shows in 2025.
As for Nash, she says she did not “need” to join OnlyFans, but chose to so that she can run her operation ethically. “I pay good wages, I don’t travel dangerously… I want to put on high-quality shows. I won’t sacrifice those things.”
There is “no shame”, she says, in how difficult it is for performers to earn a living now. “And I’m in a unique situation because I had a number one record 20 years ago that still helps me reinvest into myself. But it’s still not enough. What about people that don’t have that?”
The singer says ultimately, she would rather make money through sharing her bottom pictures than through relinquishing control.
“Some people think [OnlyFans] is a compromise – that’s how I would feel in a more corporate setting,” she says.
“My bum is for sale – my artistic vision is not.”
Entertainment
Upskirted, assaulted, accused of faking their music skills: Why female DJs need to be ‘bulletproof’
To see Koven’s Katie Boyle perform live is beyond impressive. Hailing from Luton, she is one of the most influential women in drum ‘n’ bass today, an artist who pioneered the art of singing live while DJing.
Although she’s now been doing it for 12 years, her vast knowledge doesn’t silence the trolls online.
“There is a real bad misogyny online against women,” she says of the industry, with plenty of critics refusing to “believe they’re doing what they say they’re doing, and that’s been quite a hard thing to combat”.
Koven is a duo. In the studio, Boyle collaborates with producer Max Rowat; live, she performs and mixes alone. They have just released their second album, Moments In Everglow.
Koven (L-R): Max Rowat and Katie Boyle
While both Boyle and Rowat are equally involved in making tracks, a minority of very vocal fans still refuse to accept she does anything other than sing.
“I will always be accused of the male half doing more on anything to do with technology,” says Boyle. “The amount of comments [I get] to say, ‘she didn’t make this’. No explanation as to why they think that it is, just purely because [I’m] a woman, which is just mad.”
Koven’s Katie Boyle says she has had some ‘awful incidences’
While Boyle loves performing live, there are moments, she admits, where being one of the few women on the scene can feel unsafe.
“I’ve had some awful incidences,” she says. “I had someone run on stage and completely grab me, hand down my top, down my trousers, while I was on the stage, which is crazy because you think that’s happening in front of an audience. I mean, this guy literally had to be plied off me.
“That was when I did think, ‘I need to bring someone with me to most places’. I didn’t feel safe travelling around by myself.”
‘You get trolled for everything’
DJ Paulette. Pic: Paulette
Sadly, Boyle isn’t alone. Over a 30-year career, DJ Paulette has scaled the heights of dance music fame, playing throughout Europe, with a residency back in the day at Manchester’s Hacienda.
“Let’s just say I have two towels on my rider and it’s not just because I sweat a lot,” she jokes, miming a whack for those around her.
“I’ve spent time in DJ booths where I’ve had a skirt on and people have been taking pictures up my skirt. People think upskirting is a joke… and I got fed up with it.” Wearing shorts, she says, she still ended with “people with their hands all over me”. Now, she sticks to trousers. “But we shouldn’t have to alter the way we look for the environment that we work in.”
She admits, in order to stick it out, she’s had to bulletproof herself. “You get trolled for everything, for the way you look – if you put on weight, if you’ve lost weight.”
Not only is the discourse towards female DJs different online, she says, she has also been repeatedly told by those working in the industry that because she’s a woman, she has a sell-by date.
“I went for dinner with three guys… one of them said to me, ‘you know Paulette there is no promoter or organiser who is ever going to employ a black female DJ with grey hair’, and they all laughed.
“That was them saying to me that my career was over, and I was in my 40s. At the time, I felt crushed… I think it really does take women who have a real steel will to make their way through.”
‘I will not stop talking about it’
DJ Jaguar at the International Music Summit in Ibiza. Pic: Ben Levi Suhling
As the great and the good of the dance world gather in Ibiza for the industry’s annual International Music Summit, with dance music more popular than ever there is of course much to party about.
But for BBC Radio 1 broadcaster and DJ Jaguar, one of this year’s summit’s cohosts, some serious conversations also need to be had.
“You can get off the plane and look at the billboards around Ibiza and it’s basically white men – David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and they are incredible artists in their own right – but the women headliners, there’s barely any visibility of them, it’s awful.”
She adds: “I will not stop talking about it because it is the reality.”
Trolling and safety are also big concerns. “You’re in these green rooms, there’s a lot of people there, drinking and doing other things… and I’ve walked into green rooms where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially when I was a bit younger. I was on my own, it’s like 2am, and you have to watch yourself.”
Male DJs don’t have the same stories
The International Music Summit in Ibiza
She says she has female friends who have had drinks spiked when they were DJing. But her male friends? “They don’t have the same stories to tell me.”
Creamfields, arguably the UK’s biggest dance festival, is emblematic of the gender imbalance. It remains one of the least representative festivals in terms of female artists, with last year’s line-up more than 80% male.
Read more from Sky News:
Why gaming still has a women problem
‘There is no HR department in the music industry’
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Laila MacKenzie, founder of Lady Of The House, a community that supports and tries to encourage more women into dance music, says the talent pipeline problem isn’t helped by the current discourse online.
“There is a real damaging factor how people can be really nasty online and really nasty in the media and how that actually may discourage and demotivate women from stepping forward into their talent,” she says.
In reality, for so many women working within dance music, the trolling can be so unpleasant that it’s drowning out the good.
“There is so much positivity and so many lovely and supportive people,” says Boyle. “But unfortunately it feels like the negative and the toxic energy is just louder sometimes.”
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway