Onlyfans: Musicians and athletes use the erotic platform

The music business is a tough place, that much has long been known. While superstars like Taylor Swift are making millions, many others are having a hard time making a living. CD sales have been bringing in almost nothing for a long time, streaming providers also only pay small amounts – and now the income from live performances is also shrinking.

This applies not only to newcomers, but also to musicians who have actually made their breakthrough in the business long ago. So it’s no wonder that artists are looking for other sources of income. Some artists find what they are looking for on a platform that enjoys a rather dubious reputation: Onlyfans. It’s a good thing that the erotic service wants to polish up its image.

Kate Nash just registered there. The singer has a solid fan base, but that’s apparently not enough: she’s making a loss on her tours, the 37-year-old told the BBC. As a side income, she now posts photos of her butt on Onlyfans – under the motto “Butts for tour buses”. “I think the butt is the perfect combination of comedy and sexuality,” says Nash.

On Onlyfans, users can subscribe to profiles of other users for a fee. Theoretically, the platform is open to all content, but in the past it has established itself as a hub for explicit erotic photos and videos. Many porn stars also take advantage of the opportunity to earn money there. Nash doesn’t want to go that far, but hopes that the income will be able to cover the costs of her tours better than is currently the case. The Brit told the BBC that she expects to earn more money on Onlyfans in the next three months than with her music.

Other musicians have also discovered the platform as a source of income. Lilly Allen, for example, has been selling photos of her feet there since the summer. Apparently it’s worth it: Allen claimed that she earns more from these pictures than from the Spotify streams of her songs. The pop singer is no small player in the business: between seven and eight million people listen to her music on Spotify every month.

While this part-time job is more of a necessity for the musicians, it comes in handy for Onlyfans. The London-based provider urgently wants to move away from the dirty image of a better porn site. In order to position itself more seriously, Onlyfans is now actively recruiting celebrities to attract their fans – even without nude content.

This also includes the German bobsledder Lisa Buckwitz, who has a similar problem to Nash and Allen: she is very successful, but her victories on the track don’t bring in enough money. The winter athlete has entered into a sponsorship partnership with Onlyfans and also posts content there herself. The platform approached them through an agency “because they wanted to change their image”.

On Onlyfans, the 29-year-old, who won Olympic gold in the two-man bobsleigh at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, appears in a bikini or sports bra. It should stay that way: “I will definitely not show myself naked. That is my limit.” And male athletes also earn extra money on Onlyfans, for example diver Timo Barthel, professional soccer player Douglas Costa or tennis player Nick Kyrgios. While Barthel uses this to finance, among other things, regular visits to the osteopath, ex-Bayern star Costa and Kyrgios, who earned around $12.5 million in prize money during his career, are unlikely to be dependent on the income from the subscriptions.