Kate Nash is heading into another money-losing tour, and she already knows how she plans to cover the gap. According to The Independent‘s Tom Murray, the 39-year-old singer says she expects to lose about $16,000 on her current run of shows and will keep posting on OnlyFans to make up the shortfall.

“I’m going on tour to North America. I’m set to lose about 16,000 dollars and I’m going to be putting my ass on the internet a lot to try and cover the cost of that. So, let’s have some fun,” Nash said in a new video, as quoted by both The Independent and Far Out Magazine‘s Rachael Pimblett.

Why a Brit Award winner ended up on OnlyFans

Nash joined OnlyFans in 2024, partly to pay for live shows and partly to make a point about how hard it is to earn a living as a touring musician. The effort ran under the name Butts for Tour Buses.

In the new video, she traced it back to the release of her 2024 album 9 Sad Symphonies. “I was just losing thousands and thousands of pounds because I was choosing to have a human band instead of backing tracks, a sound person, a lighting person, and a few members of crew,” she said.

She argued that her track record should be enough to pay the people who work with her. “I have millions of streams and I sell thousands of tickets,” she said, adding that this “means that I should be able to have a band and a crew and pay them.”

Per The Independent, Nash said she first opened the account because she “needed to make money fast” and wanted to “save Christmas,” after having to let a crew member go ahead of the holidays.

The losses keep stacking up

This isn’t a one-off. Far Out reports that earlier this year Nash revealed a £26,000 loss on her most recent European tour, on top of a £13,000 loss on her UK tour.

The current North American leg kicked off on November 3 at the Center for Arts at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to Hoodline‘s Mitch M. Rosenthal, with later stops listed in cities including Philadelphia, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.

Hoodline also points back to an earlier Rolling Stone interview in which Nash said charging $9.99 a month on OnlyFans solved her money problems within seven days and paid for her 9 Sad Symphonies tour through the UK and Europe. She estimated each show cost her roughly $10,000 to produce.

From protest to a new OnlyFans TV channel

Nash has taken the issue well beyond her subscriber page. The Independent notes that she spoke to MPs earlier this year about needing the platform to fund her touring despite her success.

She has also launched her own OnlyFans TV channel, which she says is about showing what life on the road really looks like. “I really enjoy vlogging,” she said. “I think traveling as a musician is really fun and interesting, and I want to share the behind-the-scenes of what it’s like to be a touring artist.”

Far Out notes that her subscription content sticks to photos of her bottom alongside vlogs sharing her opinions. Nash said she welcomed the backlash the project drew: “I loved that I was making people angry and that people were talking about the music industry and the problems within it.”

“Culture really matters to me. Music really matters to me. And the doors are quickly closing on who can access a career in music,” she added.

The takeaway

Nash isn’t using OnlyFans as a career change. She’s using it as a funding source and a soapbox at once. A singer with a No. 1 debut album, Made of Bricks in 2007, still expects to lose five figures on a tour, and her fan subscriptions are what keep the band and crew on the payroll. For working musicians watching their road costs climb, that’s a hard model to ignore.

Image: Kate Nash at Rough Trade (2018), photo by Paul Hudson, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.