How Universal Basic Income Could Rewire the UK Music Industry –

The UK music industry runs on adrenaline, overdrafts and blind faith. For every headline-grabbing arena tour, there are thousands of artists grafting through zero-hour contracts, spiralling rent and the quiet humiliation of explaining, again, that yes, this is a real career. We talk endlessly about “supporting the arts” while letting musicians haemorrhage under austerity, stagnant fees and the algorithmic creep of AI. And yet, when Universal Basic Income enters the conversation, the national mood shifts from indifference to outrage in under a minute. It’s absurd. In a country that bankrolls corporate bailouts without blinking, the idea of guaranteeing ordinary people a basic financial floor is treated like heresy. If UBI were put to a referendum tomorrow, I’d wager we’d see another Brexit-shaped wound torn open by spite and tabloid myth-making.

The Day Job as Creative Handbrake

Imagine the UK introducing a monthly, unconditional payment to every adult, enough to cover essentials. Not luxury, not excess, just survival without panic. For musicians, that alone would be seismic. The day job wouldn’t vanish overnight, but it would stop being a chokehold. Artists could choose part-time work without terror. They could tour without calculating whether petrol money means skipping meals. They could record without maxing out credit cards or living in their parents’ box room at 30.

UBI would not turn everyone into a full-time songwriter. It would, however, allow people to create from intrinsic desire rather than pure economic desperation, because let’s face it, when art is made because it has to be, not because rent is due, the energy changes. The industry would still have ambition, competition and graft, but it would lose that constant hum of survival anxiety.

“But People Wouldn’t Work”: The Tired Myth

Every time UBI is mentioned, someone pipes up with the same line: people will stop working. It’s lazy, and it ignores evidence. In Finland, a 2017 to 2018 basic income trial gave unemployed participants a monthly payment. The results showed improved well-being and mental health, and employment levels did not collapse. In Canada, the Mincome experiment in Dauphin during the 1970s saw only modest reductions in work hours, mostly among new mothers and students who chose to invest time in care and education. Hardly the apocalypse.

More recently, Spain rolled out a minimum income scheme during the pandemic. It wasn’t a pure UBI, but it showed how direct payments can stabilise households during a crisis. The world didn’t grind to a halt. What did shift was stress. Security breeds participation, not idleness.

For musicians, that myth is especially hollow. Creative people already work obscene hours for free. They rehearse, record, promote, network and self-fund with little guarantee of return. The idea that they’d suddenly lie horizontal because they could afford groceries is a fantasy conjured by people who’ve never tried to write a chorus that has any relevance in the cultural zeitgeist.

What Equality Would Feel Like in the Rehearsal Room

Equality is an abstract word until you put it in a rehearsal room. Right now, the UK music pipeline is filtered by class. If you can’t afford unpaid internships, London rent or equipment, your talent has to be extraordinary to break through (and even that doesn’t guarantee anything!). UBI would flatten the sharpest edges. More working-class artists would stay in the game longer. More disabled musicians could navigate fluctuating health without being punished by a punitive benefits system. More parents could keep writing without choosing between childcare and chord progressions.

Picture a festival line-up shaped less by who had family money and more by who had something urgent to say. Picture studios that aren’t exclusive to those who can swallow three months of losses. The emotional texture of British music would widen. When more people can afford to exist, more stories get told.

And yes, some would still chase fame. Some would still hustle relentlessly. But the baseline would shift from survival to possibility. That’s a different creative climate altogether.

Political Apathy in an Age of AI

The cruel irony is that we’re having this conversation at the exact moment the creative sector is being squeezed from both ends. Austerity hollowed out arts funding. Local venues shut their doors. Now, AI tools are replicating visual art, copy and even music at scale. Freelancers watch contracts evaporate while politicians talk about “innovation” as though it’s a neutral force.

There is little political appetite for UBI in Westminster. It’s framed as utopian, unaffordable or morally suspect. Meanwhile, wealth concentration accelerates and precarious work becomes the norm. We’re told to reskill, retrain, pivot, adapt. Adapt to what, exactly, when the ground keeps shifting?

Advocacy for UBI in the UK has existed for years, from grassroots groups to MPs who’ve floated pilot schemes. Scotland and Wales have both explored feasibility studies. Yet the public conversation stalls at caricature. It’s easier to sneer about “handouts” than to confront a labour market that is structurally unstable.

The Referendum We’d Probably Fumble

Let’s be honest. If UBI were put to a national vote tomorrow, we’d likely see a campaign fuelled by resentment. Headlines about “scroungers”. Talk radio callers insisting they don’t want their taxes funding someone else’s guitar pedals. Social media threads curdling with the same old bitterness about benefits. It would feel uncomfortably familiar.

But here’s the thing. That bitterness is often rooted in fear. People are terrified of slipping. They’re terrified that if someone else gets support, their own struggle is invalidated. UBI challenges that scarcity mindset by proposing universality. Everyone gets it. No means-testing, no humiliation, no bureaucratic labyrinth designed to trip you up.

That universality is precisely why it’s powerful. It reframes support as a right rather than a moral judgement. In a music industry obsessed with hustle culture, that would be radical.

Conclusion: Start the Conversation Before It’s Weaponised

The UK music scene is brimming with talent and quietly suffocating under financial strain. Universal Basic Income will not fix every inequity. It won’t magically reform exploitative contracts or dismantle monopolies. But it would give artists breathing room. It would soften the precarity that drives so many out of the industry before they’ve had a chance to fully find their voice.

The lack of widespread support isn’t proof that UBI is unworkable. It’s proof that we haven’t done the collective homework. Research the pilots. Read the data. Talk to economists who aren’t stuck in Thatcher-era reflexes. And yes, challenge the friend or family member who froths at the mouth at the mere mention of benefits. Ask them why security for all feels more threatening than poverty for many.

If we want a music industry that reflects the full spectrum of British life, we need to start thinking bigger than survival. UBI is not a silver bullet. It is, however, a serious proposal for a society that values human creativity over permanent anxiety. The least we can do is stop laughing at it and start debating it properly.

Article by Amelia Vandergast