Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cNothing. Zero. Nada. Didn\u2019t care,\u201d says Matt Thomson, frontman of rock band The Amazons. He\u2019s talking about his interest, or lack of it, in tax affairs and income streams when the group formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 2014. Three UK top 10 albums later, however, The Amazons\u2019 singer has a different attitude towards financial literacy. \u201cIn 2025, it\u2019s everything,\u201d he remarks, with a hint of ruefulness.No musician is drawn to a life in music to learn about dividend payments and tax filing dates. But understanding how their finances work is almost as important in the long run as knowing their scales. The Amazons, whose name was inspired by Arthur Ransome\u2019s children\u2019s book Swallows and Amazons, have been compelled to think of themselves as a business, not unlike the online behemoth Amazon. \u201cVery much so,\u201d Thomson says, \u201cwhich goes against my instincts.\u201d\u00a0Twenty years ago, a top 10 act would have earned a decent amount from record sales. But songs are mainly streamed these days, not sold. Though Spotify made worldwide royalty payments of \u00a37.7bn in 2024, the most in the platform\u2019s history, complaints about low rates of return from streaming are rife. Compounding this is a collapse in touring revenues amid the cost of living crisis.\u201cSince the pandemic, for the middle rung of touring musicians, the margins have just got smaller and smaller,\u201d Thomson says. \u201cAnd then you have to factor in the pathetic streaming revenue that we can make. Every pound and penny counts. In the years that you\u2019re not touring or you\u2019re not in an album cycle, you really have to make it your business to know where everything is going.\u201dThe 31-year-old and his two bandmates are currently busy with the campaign for their forthcoming album, 21st Century Fiction. \u201cBecause the margins have decreased for a band, we have looked at pretty much every dimension, whether it\u2019s crew or commissioning someone to make a tour poster, and we\u2019ve gone: Well, those fees are going up, we\u2019re not making the money to pay for it, so we\u2019ll have to learn to do it ourselves,\u201d he says.In the past, bands became businesses as a result of being successful. The Beatles set up their first company, The Beatles Ltd, in 1963. It was created to lower their tax bill, two months after they received their first silver disc for the single \u201cPlease Please Me\u201d. But musicians these days are often advised to incorporate themselves as a first step in their career, before the hoped-for hits start climbing the charts.\u00a0\u201cWe had to explain to a couple of our artists the difference between being a sole trader and a private limited company,\u201d says Moe Bah of 5K Records, a Sony Music-affiliated label and management company. \u201cIf you want to run it as an actual business, then you\u2019re going to have to expense it and cost it and do it in the most efficient way. Some artists can abide by that and understand it and some are just a bit more uncontrollable, I would say.\u201dBah and his 5K Records partner Kilo Jalloh are based in London but run a global operation. West Africa\u2019s booming music scene is a particular focus. One of their biggest hits has been \u201cPeople\u201d by the US-Cameroonian singer Libianca, which charted internationally in 2023 after initial success in Nigeria. Their roster operates across different territories, each with distinct tax laws and revenue rates for streaming.\u00a0\u00a0They want to set up a department, Bah explains, \u201cto offer artists assistance in how to deal with receiving their first cheque or advance and prepare them for taxes and budgeting. It\u2019s very important towards building a long- term career. If an artist\u2019s finances are not in check then how do you expect them to focus on the creative side?\u201d\u00a0Jalloh laments the absence of financial literacy in music education, and UK schools more generally. \u201cEspecially if you\u2019re not from a privileged background, coming across large amounts of money is like a eureka moment for an artist. It\u2019s like, \u2018This money can set me up for life.\u2019 But it\u2019s not all theirs.\u201d His advice to budding recording artists is succinct: \u201cGet an accountant on board.\u201d\u00a0Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the grandest, financial adviser in pop music was Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who managed the Rolling Stones\u2019 money until 2007. In the book According to the Rolling Stones, he recalled taking on the role in 1968: \u201cI was then a director of a small merchant bank and managed to persuade my partners that the financial problems of a prominent rock band were no different, in essence, from the problems of any other financial organisation that sought advice in the City of London.\u201dPrince Rupert, a scion of Bavarian royalty, was hired by the business-minded, socially ambitious Mick Jagger, a former finance and accounting student at the London School of Economics. But it is more typical for a band or artist\u2019s manager to point their client towards the services of a bean counter.\u201cFor musicians, who might get advances or large sums of cash at different times, actual financial planning is quite unusual, especially at a young age. It\u2019s not how normal people operate,\u201d says Paul Bonham of the Music Managers Forum, which represents about 1,500 managers in the UK. \u201cIdeally, a manager and an artist would get a good accountant at the earliest stage possible.\u201d\u201cWhen an artist gets their first advance, from publishing or a record deal, that\u2019s really when they need to go to the holy trinity of accountant, lawyer and banker,\u201d says Paul Morris of London-based entertainment accountancy firm Hardwick and Morris. \u201cHave they got the right structure in place? Are they putting enough aside to deal with Rachel Reeves? Are they up to date in their filing? Are they doing all the right things in terms of how they look after their money?\u201d\u00a0His colleague Olivia Fuller reckons that today\u2019s generation of musicians are a bit more financially savvy than their predecessors. \u201cThey\u2019re more on the ball in keeping records than some people were in the past, handing in a bag of receipts months down the line. But I think there\u2019s still a lack of education about when they should be doing it.\u201dThe Amazons benefited from a helpful accountant in their early days, based at a firm in Slough \u2014 a far cry from Prince Rupert\u2019s milieu. \u201cHe was just brilliant,\u201d Thomson recalls. \u201cHe was this kind of seven foot Dickensian character who just put an arm around us. He knew nothing about music whatsoever, but he knew how to make us tax efficient and clever with our money.\u201d\u00a0It took a couple of years for the band to start earning enough to pay themselves a regular wage (a couple of them have private pensions). During that time, Thomson worked in a supermarket. \u201cI remember we all got \u00a310,000 when we signed a record deal in 2016 and I was just completely beside myself,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember looking at my bank account, like: Oh my God, there\u2019s \u00a310,000 in there! It was a really amazing moment. And then I left my job stacking shelves at Waitrose.\u201dThey pool their earnings as a band. \u201cIt\u2019s all about putting it all in the pot and paying ourselves a steady wage, as tax efficiently as possible. That approach completely saved our bacon during Covid,\u201d Thomson says.\u00a0In 2016, they began giving themselves a monthly wage of \u00a3500. The total went up until the pandemic, then dropped, and has since climbed again. Meanwhile, their last album reached number five in the UK charts. \u201cBuying a house is out of our grasp, even with top 10 records,\u201d the band\u2019s frontman says.\u00a0Amid all the cost-cutting and belt-tightening, the bottom line remains their music. \u201cQuite simply, money is longevity,\u201d Thomson says. \u201cIt\u2019s about building fanbases over time. For that, you need money. It\u2019s the only way to stay in the game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cNothing. Zero. Nada. Didn\u2019t care,\u201d says Matt Thomson, frontman of rock band The Amazons. He\u2019s talking about his interest, or lack of it, in tax affairs and income streams when the group formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 2014. Three UK top 10 albums later,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-256858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256860,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256858\/revisions\/256860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}