Music careers span performing, composing, directing, teaching, DJ work, touring, and the wider business around recorded and live music. In the United States, musicians and singers held about 170,400 jobs in 2025, while the UK music industry supported 216,000 full-time-equivalent posts in 2023. The figures below show how employment, pay, exports, touring, and workforce composition differ by country and measurement.
Contents
- U.S. musician and singer employment
- Pay across music occupations
- Outlook and U.S. employment hubs
- The UK music industry at scale
- Creator earnings and international work
- Who works in UK music careers
U.S. musician and singer employment
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated about 170,400 musician and singer jobs in 2025. This is an occupational estimate for the United States, not a count of every person who makes music or every income stream attached to music. The same BLS profile shows that self-employed workers accounted for 48% of musician and singer jobs in 2025. That share matters because music work is often assembled from performances, teaching, contracts, and other engagements rather than one permanent employer. (BLS, Musicians and Singers: Occupational Outlook Handbook)
The largest listed employment setting was religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations, accounting for 35% of musician and singer jobs in 2025. Performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries accounted for another 12%. Educational services at the state, local, and private levels accounted for 3%. These categories describe where the jobs were recorded, so they do not represent a complete map of all possible music-career activities.
The large self-employed share and the smaller employer categories point to a career structure with multiple routes into the occupation. A musician may work across live performance, an organization, and education over the same period, but the BLS job figures should still be read as occupational estimates rather than a headcount of unique people.
Pay across music occupations
BLS reported a U.S. median hourly wage of $47.80 for musicians and singers in May 2025. The distribution was wide: the lowest-paid 10% earned less than $20.35 per hour, while the highest-paid 10% earned more than $132.56 per hour. These are wage-and-salary measures, and BLS notes that its wage data do not include self-employed workers. (BLS, Musicians and Singers: Occupational Outlook Handbook)
Median hourly wages also differed by the employer industry listed in the BLS profile:
| U.S. industry or occupation | Measure | May 2025 figure |
|---|---|---|
| Musicians and singers, all listed settings | Median hourly wage | $47.80 |
| Religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations | Median hourly wage | $53.16 |
| Performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries | Median hourly wage | $50.56 |
| Educational services | Median hourly wage | $30.88 |
The industry comparison is useful for understanding the range, but it is not a guarantee of an individual musician’s annual income. The educational-services median was $30.88 per hour, compared with $53.16 in the religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations category. The figures are for May 2025 and remain wage measures rather than total earnings from self-employment, royalties, touring, or irregular engagements. (BLS, Musicians and Singers: Occupational Outlook Handbook)
Other music occupations show a different mix of job counts and pay. In May 2025, the U.S. musicians-and-singers occupation had 36,180 jobs and a $60.46 mean hourly wage in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics table. Music directors and composers had 12,540 jobs, a $43.50 mean hourly wage, and a $90,470 mean annual wage. Disc jockeys except radio had 7,920 jobs and a $21.61 median hourly wage. The table’s mean and median measures should not be treated as interchangeable. (BLS, Table 1: National employment and wage data from the OEWS survey, May 2025)
Outlook and U.S. employment hubs
BLS projects U.S. musician and singer employment to rise from 170,400 jobs in 2025 to 170,900 in 2035. That is a projected 0% employment change from 2025 to 2035, with about 17,400 openings expected each year on average over the period. The openings forecast is not the same as net job growth: it includes opportunities associated with people leaving the occupation or moving into other work. These 2025–2035 figures are forecasts. (BLS, Musicians and Singers: Occupational Outlook Handbook)
The BLS metropolitan chart provides a snapshot of where musician and singer jobs were concentrated in May 2024. New York-Newark-Jersey City had 4,920 musician and singer jobs, the highest metropolitan total in the chart. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin had 1,740, Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin had 1,490, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont had 1,010.
Music directors and composers had a different metropolitan pattern in the same May 2024 chart. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim had 1,160 jobs, New York-Newark-Jersey City had 1,050, and Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin had 490. These are metropolitan job totals for the occupations shown, not forecasts and not measures of the relative quality of each market. (BLS, OEWS chart of areas with the highest employment levels, May 2024)
The UK music industry at scale
UK Music’s This Is Music 2024 report estimated that the UK music industry contributed £7.6 billion in gross value added (GVA) in 2023. That was a 13% increase from £6.7 billion in 2022. The report also put UK music export revenues at £4.6 billion in 2023, up 15% from £4.0 billion in 2022. These are UK industry economic estimates, not individual worker earnings. (UK Music, This Is Music 2024)
The report measured UK music-industry employment at 216,000 full-time-equivalent posts in 2023, up 3% from 210,000 full-time-equivalent posts in 2022. A full-time-equivalent measure represents employment capacity rather than necessarily the number of distinct individuals. That distinction is especially important in an industry where freelance and self-employed work is common.
UK Music cited Office for National Statistics figures showing that self-employed workers made up 70% of people working in UK music, performing, and visual arts, compared with 15% of the UK working population. The comparison uses the broader music, performing, and visual arts grouping cited in the report, so it should not be read as a self-employment rate for every narrow music occupation.
The latest comparisons reported by UK Music also show uneven change inside the sector. Employment in UK music retail fell 44% over the report’s latest two-year comparison, while employment across the UK music industry excluding music retail increased 6% in that latest comparison. The number of independent UK record shops increased 10% over the same reported comparison. The report does not turn these changes into a single trend for every music career.
Live infrastructure faced pressure in 2023. Seventy-six UK live music venues closed entirely during the year, according to Music Venue Trust figures cited by UK Music. Another 72 venues ended their live music programming during 2023. These venue figures help explain why industry-level growth and individual touring conditions can move in different directions. (UK Music, This Is Music 2024)
Creator earnings and international work
UK Music’s 2023 survey analysis separates creator income by annual earnings band and geography. Among UK music creators earning £25,000 or less per year, 73% of earnings came from the UK, 14% from the EU, and 13% from the rest of the world. Among creators earning more than £200,000 per year, 39% came from the UK, 33% from the EU, and 28% from the rest of the world. These percentages describe income shares by earnings band, not the share of creators in each band. (UK Music, This Is Music 2024)
For UK creators earning more than £200,000 per year, touring income was sourced 43% from the UK, 37% from the EU, and 20% from the rest of the world. The geographic mix therefore differed by both earnings level and income type in the survey analysis.
International work also carried reported cost and access barriers. U.S. visa fees for British-based artists and music creators increased 250% from 1 April 2024. In the 2023 survey, 28% of surveyed UK music creators said Brexit affected them. Among the surveyed creators affected by Brexit, 87% reported decreased earnings after leaving the EU and 13% reported increased earnings. EU earnings among those affected declined 45% in the survey analysis, while affected creators earning £25,000 or less reported a 60% decline in EU earnings.
Among surveyed UK music creators, 60% reported visas or work permits as an adverse cost change after Brexit. Among those affected by Brexit, 71% reported receiving fewer invitations to perform in the EU, and 41% said touring the EU was no longer an option. These figures describe respondents affected by Brexit, not all UK music workers, and they are survey results rather than a census of touring activity.
Who works in UK music careers
UK Music’s 2024 workforce diversity survey offers a snapshot of participation and senior-level representation. Women represented 53.8% of respondents, while men represented 43.1%. Among senior-level respondents, women represented 48.3% and men represented 47.0%.
For respondents answering the ethnicity question, Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse respondents represented 25.2%, compared with 72.9% White respondents. At senior level, Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse respondents represented 22.1%, while White respondents represented 73.7%.
The survey also reported that 25.1% of respondents stated that they had a disability under the report’s combined disability question. A further 16.5% stated that they had a clinical diagnosis, were awaiting diagnosis, or strongly believed they had a neurodivergent condition without seeking diagnosis.
These results should be interpreted as survey snapshots rather than complete population estimates. The UK Music Diversity Report’s workforce survey included 2,874 people and states that it is not fully representative of the entire UK music industry. Its percentages therefore describe the survey population and its definitions, not every person working in UK music. (UK Music, UK Music Diversity Report 2024)