Money Matters is a NewMusicBox x I CARE IF YOU LISTEN collaboration, supported by New Music USA
There is a lot of buzz in the classical music industry right now about helping artists become more “entrepreneurial:” offering real-world training in the skills we will need to cobble together a living. But whether it’s organization-sponsored webinars or conservatory entrepreneurship courses,there is still an elephant in the room:
The pay is too damn low.
I am a singer-turned-entrepreneur who co-founded a successful chamber opera company, Victory Hall Opera. I also teach entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia. But I was struck by the truth of Anna Wiener’s 2025 New Yorker article, which notes that the entrepreneurial work ethic tends to be a popular notion “during periods of acute unemployment.” The result, she argues, is “too many people working much too hard because there’s just not enough work.”
Is classical music’s sudden embrace of entrepreneurship an admission of defeat? An acceptance that no one should expect to make a comfortable living as a musician anymore? Let’s talk about what’s going on from the two sides of the table I have now sat on: artist and administrator.
Artist fees — especially performance fees — have been shrinking for decades. Although there are no good aggregate statistics on this (I’ve looked), unscientific inquiry among colleagues indicates that relative to inflation, fees have been reduced over the past 25 years to a third or less of their previous, already-hardscrabble value.
Are the pampered zillennials not willing to sacrifice enough for la vie bohème, or is what’s being asked of them not actually viable: namely that they lose money every time they accept a gig? (This was one of the points composer Juhi Bansal made in her 2022 essay that inspired this “Money Matters” series.) First we were told that shrinking fees were due to the Recession.
During this time, opera companies in particular started balancing their budgets through exploitative Young Artist Programs (a subject I just produced a film about, called YAPs). Then the reason was diminishing audiences — blaming the audience being a classical music go-to. Then it was the pandemic, and the political climate? Or … everyone staying home to watch Netflix, or something?
But what I have found in my role as an administrator is that it is actually not hard for a presenting organization to prioritize fair pay for artists. It’s just that — in the vacuum of artist-forward mission statements and operating principles — it’s been easier to cut it. As they might say in Washington, the “political will” isn’t there. The mission statements of presenting orgs almost universally mention audiences, education, and community. Very few mention artists.
Russell Willis Taylor, the former CEO of the English National Opera, once wisely told me: for artist fees to return to career-sustaining levels, arts organizations need to redefine what their fixed and variable costs are. If your fixed costs are your office rent, your admin salaries, and your large-scale production budgets, then what is variable? The fees you pay your artists. Too many orgs are banking on the fact that there will always be a more desperate, younger, cheaper individual who will do it for less.
But classical music cannot be sustained by hobbyists and youth alone. We need mature artists to be able to practice their craft while passing on their knowledge to younger colleagues. This is how the beautiful continuum of a classical art form happens. Of course, middle-aged professionals expect to earn a middle-class paycheck, so why hire the expensive, seasoned professional when your variable costs structure says they’re replaceable?
The Russell Willis Taylor Principle challenges arts organizations to ask themselves: What if the individual artists were the fixed cost? Then, I bet — actually, I know, because I’ve done it — they could afford to offer respectful fees by negotiating cheaper office rent, or downsizing admin staff, or designing a technically simpler, cheaper stage set. It’s all a matter of will, and intentionality.
As they say, “Show me your budget, and I will tell you your values.”
When we launched Victory Hall Opera in 2015, we drafted six core Founding Principles. Over 10 seasons, we put these idealistic principles to the stress test of real-life opera production, and they have served us well. Here is Principle #5:
5. Professional Respect
VHO shall assume an attitude of respect for artists’ professional and artistic status, integrity, ability and achievement. VHO will prioritize the fair remuneration of its artists over and above other production and administrative expenses.
It can be that simple.
But how does an institution determine what its “values” are in the first place? Some basic thought-work can go a long way. Here are the steps any arts-producing organization can take to ensure their budget and artistic values align:
- Figure out what the unique value proposition of your product is, and
- Who creates that value.
- Invest in them by expressing this as written policy and principles that
- Guide your company’s financial and other decisions.
But the truth is, institutions aren’t the only ones to blame for the pay being too damn low. Artists (and their agents) must also develop the courage and skills to defend their own economic survival and professionalism through negotiating fairer contracts for themselves. This might sound like an impossible ask when we are fighting against capitalist forces of supply and demand, but let’s not pretend that the heavily-subsidized nonprofit world of classical music is the New York Stock Exchange. If we are the value, we need to start acting like it.
Artists: I understand why it’s hard to for us to advocate for ourselves. Unlike business school, no one teaches us how to negotiate at conservatory. (Although maybe here is an example of how those entrepreneurship classes can empower us: because negotiating is in fact a real and challenging skill, if much easier than arpeggios.) If a gig offer arrives in your inbox, you feel elated, and your instinct is to just grab it. You might also feel slightly panicked and desperate, which is the worst place to try to negotiate from.
It serves you in these moments to have worked out some rules for yourself, and to have studied basic principles of effective negotiation. I got much better at this by taking a course at Stanford with master negotiator Margaret Neale, thanks to a scholarship from The Music Academy of the West. (I highly recommend Neale’s book, Getting (More of) What You Want.)
Here are some of the tips I learned that have bolstered my bank account (and my dignity) as an artist. As someone who also hires artists and negotiates from the other end, I can verify that these principles remain true from the employer’s point of view:
- Set the “anchor” by naming your aspirational fee first. Don’t be afraid to come in on the high side initially: that’s what negotiation is all about.
- Shed the fear that you will lose the gig because you named your fee. The actual likelihood of the other party walking away is grossly exaggerated in our minds.
- Know your minimum fee, and do not accept anything below it. Determine your minimum fee by asking yourself: how much would I have to be paid to truly feel respected and valued for the work, time, and expertise I am contributing?
- Don’t forget: you are the value. You are a professional artist. You are not interchangeable or replaceable, and you have mastered an incredibly difficult and rare skillset. You are the solution to someone’s problem of needing to find an excellent, available candidate to hire.
- Everything is negotiable. It’s okay to ask for union-based rehearsal hours, or help with childcare. Or a realistic schedule for your commission. Or a plane ticket for your cello.
Do not let the specter of being tarred as “difficult” or the fear of losing the gig prevent you from asking for the things you need to do your job well. Evidence proves that employers will value you MORE for having negotiated the terms of your contract.
The classical music industry presents the rise of artist-entrepreneurship as a win-win: empowering to artists, diversifying, encouraging of innovation — and not demanding any accountability or real change from employing institutions.
What institutions have failed to acknowledge is that prioritizing fair pay for artists would be the real win-win: resulting in longer, more sustainable careers; increased artist well-being, loyalty, and morale; greater access to artists’ creative contributions; and a general increase in the quality and impact of the art produced. To state the (should-be) obvious: investing in the artform means investing in artists.
You are a professional contractor. I do not challenge my plumber when he shows me that my corroded brass fittings are about to burst and tells me I should replace these with PEX pipes. I let him do his job and pay the bill. And maybe save my house in the process.
———————————————–
Some more examples of artist-forward policies and language can be read in this Policy Report produced by SINGTANK, an artist-advocacy think tank I co-led from 2021-2025.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. You can support the work of ICIYL with a tax-deductible gift to ACF. For more on ACF, visit composersforum.org.
