“Pay to play” once meant bands being charged for the privilege of performing. Young musicians selling tickets upfront, carrying the financial risk while promoters protected themselves from losses.
It was exploitation then and it is exploitation now.
The difference is that the mentality has spread far beyond musicians. Across grassroots culture, artists, photographers, writers and volunteers are increasingly expected to subsidise the very scenes they help sustain. Unpaid labour is dressed up as “opportunity”, “exposure” and “community spirit”, as though passion should somehow replace wages.
At its heart, this is not just a music industry issue. It is a class issue.
Grassroots music was never built by wealthy people. Punk, folk and DIY culture came from working class communities creating something powerful out of very little. These scenes mattered because they belonged to ordinary people. They were places where someone skint, angry, overlooked or struggling could still have a voice.
Now those same spaces are becoming financially inaccessible to the very people who built them.
Most people involved in grassroots music have seen it happen. A young band desperately messaging friends all week trying to shift the final few tickets they have been told they “owe” a promoter. Photographers standing outside venues with thousands of pounds worth of equipment around their necks while still having to pay to get through the door. Volunteers arriving at festivals after paying deposits themselves, only to spend the weekend working twelve hour shifts in a high vis jacket instead of actually experiencing the event.
And the most depressing part is how normal it has all become.
A photographer can spend thousands on equipment and travel, then still be expected to buy a ticket while providing free promotional images. Writers review gigs unpaid because “it gets your name out there”. Bands are expected to behave like marketing departments on top of being musicians and then feel grateful for whatever scraps remain.
The creative industries love to talk about inclusion, diversity and community while quietly building a culture where only people with financial safety nets can afford to participate long term. If you have parents covering your rent, a comfortable salary elsewhere or enough spare income to absorb years of unpaid work, you can survive the system.
If you are working class, you probably cannot.
That means the people being pushed out are often the very people grassroots culture was supposed to represent. The kid working shifts who writes songs at midnight. The photographer saving for months to afford a second hand lens. The writer getting home at 2am after travelling across the country on advance train tickets and hope.
They are slowly being replaced by people who can afford creativity as a hobby rather than needing it as an outlet, an identity or a lifeline.
And then the same industries wonder why everything starts feeling sanitised.
What makes this even more hypocritical is the current outrage around AI replacing creative jobs. Artists are rightly furious about human creativity being devalued by cheaper alternatives.
But parts of the music industry have already spent years devaluing creative labour themselves.
If a venue stops hiring professional photographers because people will pay for tickets and provide content for free, what exactly is the difference? Paid opportunities disappear because someone else is willing, or financially able, to work for nothing. The mechanism changes. The outcome does not.
None of this is about attacking young creatives trying to get started. Everyone starts somewhere. DIY culture should absolutely leave the door open for people learning their craft.
But there is a difference between earning your stripes and being taught that your work has no value. Because once an entire culture normalises unpaid labour, eventually only the privileged can afford to create at all.
And that should terrify anyone who genuinely cares about grassroots art.
Working class creativity has always been dangerous in the best possible way. It challenges power. It tells uncomfortable truths. It documents lives that polite society often ignores. That is precisely why it matters.
But when creativity becomes something that requires money to sustain, the voices that survive are inevitably the safest ones. The least risky ones. The ones least likely to upset the system that already benefits them.
That is how scenes die.
Not with one dramatic collapse, but slowly, quietly and economically. One unpaid opportunity at a time.
