Making Music, Making Ends Meet with Jazmine Mary: ‘To Remain an Artist Is a Radical Act’

Musicians have always worked day jobs and side hustles to fund their art, and as Australia and Aotearoa continue to battle a cost-of-living crisis, the need to do so grows greater.

In Making Music, Making Ends Meet, Rolling Stone AU/NZ meets different musicians to discuss their life away from music, how they sustain their careers, and what they think needs to be done to improve our music industry.

Through a mixture of op-eds, interviews, videos, and more, our new series captures their experiences, both good and bad, as well as their hopes and fears for the future. 

Kicking off the series is Jazmine Mary, an Aotearoa-based alt-folk singer-songwriter who’s about to embark on an Australian tour. 

Mary, whose 2025 album I Want to Rock and Roll featured prominently in our year-end New Zealand albums list, will play shows with their full band in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, and more this month (icket information available here). 

When asked about money and music I’m met with an ugly conflict I often meet, and the conflict looks like seven rats in a trench coat. Do I lie to sound successful and optimistic? Or tell the truth and seem ungrateful and miserable?

I want people to be inspired and hopeful and feel elevated to be artists. I want you to know I’d die if I didn’t do this. Making music and creating is a compulsion, a need to understand and be understood, and I am a big believer (while holding fear in my throat) that music and art has always, and will always, be at the forefront of change.

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I know nothing else, I have no other skills, and I’m really not interested in doing anything else in the world. I enjoy immensely what I do and think it’s an amazing and divine privilege to make something out of nothing; have strangers dance, fuck and cry to you is nothing short of a miracle.

I also want to acknowledge the reality we face as working musicians, which is we can’t pay our fucking rent or go to therapy and we are all super sad, and at times the systems we are operating in put us in harm’s way with our minds, bodies and spirits. 

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To remain an artist / musician when it’s hard, underpaid / unpaid, and the world is blowing up is a radical act — it’s generous and I want more people to do it. I also want to be able to eat, pay my rent, and know I deserve more than that. I know I deserve to be able to do this without so much sacrifice and it shouldn’t be so hard not to quit. I’m not stupid, I’m willingly delusional that things will work out, and that’s how I survive. I cut corners and live a lifestyle that is at times extreme to be able to support being a musician. 

This looks like lots of different things. One way I’ve made my life work in music is by having periods where I don’t pay rent. I’ve done this by living in a tepee in a field for a year and working on the land for one day a week instead of paying rent. Other times I’ve moved into friends’ renovated sheds so when I’m travelling I don’t have an empty room that I’m paying $300 a week for while I also pay for hotels. 

I’ve done artist residencies in France, Thailand, China and India. This means that travel / food accommodation is covered or subsidised, and I never stop making. 

10 things I’ve done / do for money

1 – Be a bird: It was at a lights festival with choreography and headpieces, the audio I would hear was “flap 2 – 3 – 4 and flutter 6-7-8” 

2 – Nude modelling for art classes 

3 – Porn 

4 – Gardening with Louisa Nicklin and Lucy Suttor (Dick Move) 

5 – A carnival (this was bad, maybe $6/h once I crunched the numbers) 

6 – Performance art: this is the other main thing I do. I’ve performed at Christchurch Art Gallery, Basement Theatre, Performance Art Week Aotearoa, and internationally. Having many fingers in many pies helps “ends meet”

7 – Found opportunities to live rent free: I’ve lived in a tepee, in a friend’s converted garage, or simply been nomadic when I go on tour

8 – Atomic! Touring annually, we are a covers band made up of Julia Deans, Vera Ellen, Dianne Swann, myself and more. This is a breadwinner for me and some consistent income where I’m not taking on the risk of selling tickets and organising the tour. These shows are also epic and I wouldn’t give ’em up

9 – Music industry work: I mentor for the NZ Music Commission / Ignite / To The Front! and I’m on the IMNZ board. Last year I played at the Aotearoa Music Awards. All these things are crumbs but it adds up. I say yes to a lot of things and get a lot of opportunities from being a part of this community

10 – Live sound (anything to be around music) 

I operate on the generosity of strangers letting me sleep in their beds (like that strange couple with the jelly bean pool in Whanganui. I’m still not sure of their intentions), or people feeding me and my band burgers and ice cream. Thank you Patti’s & Cream in Dunedin for fueling us before our show there on tour. The generosity of other musicians when we tour internationally too — giving us their cut of tickets because they know the cash it took for us to get there.

Credit: Supplied

This makes me think about how incredible it would be for musicians and the public if we viewed the arts as a public service that we all benefit from. How do we get to enjoy the arts if the people expected to make it are having to spend four days a week making coffee? The generosity of strangers gives me hope in the world and has made me too many friends (and lovers) in too many places. It’s an absurd idea that I don’t just get paid a living wage for the work I do. 

10 things I think government / music organisations and corporations can do for musicians

1 – Increased and ongoing funding for emerging artists: we want to encourage people to be musicians and make it sustainable for them to stay

2 –  An artists’ benefit: We have seen models of this work in Ireland and here in the past. It would be a radical transformation that would serve musicians and the whole ecosystem in turn

3 – Stop stealing from us. Now I know this idea is pretty wild but can massive companies stop making insurmountable profits off our work and giving us nothing? Call me a crazy bitch

4 – Funding for mid-tier 500-1000-cap gigs that actually benefit local community and economy 

5 – No local support = No visa 

6 – Free baggage for touring musicians (looking at you, Air NZ) 

7 – Funding for MusicHelps and other organisations so they can extend therapy for music industry workers to be ongoing and more impactful like we deserve 

8 – Legislation that protects artists from AI and big tech stealing our work 

9 – Auditing of large radio stations receiving NZ On Air funding to play NZ music 

10 – Go to a goddamn gig and show some respect, loser 

My income from music last year was approximately $60,000. Fantastic, wow, great.

Only no, my outgoings were over $45,000.

I pay my band, sound engineers, studios, filmmakers, for posters, ads, venue fees, and that’s great. I’m glad all these people are getting a piece of this sad little pie I’ve cultivated with my sleepless nights for over 10 years. My question is why are we so willing to accept that we don’t make anything?

I was asked by Rolling Stone if I think there is a taboo of working a part-time job alongside music to “make ends meet,” and my answer is an undoubtable no. There is no taboo — it is far too readily accepted that musicians don’t make money and that’s the way it is. You don’t like it? Get a real job… bitch, this is a real job. 

Credit: Jim Tannock

If there was no money in music, I’d accept it. I’d accept that this is something we do for love and compulsion and creation, but that’s not the case. There is money, and me and my peers are generating it. I’m just getting a crumb of it. 

Right now music operates as a pyramid scheme with Live Nation, Spotify, Ticketmaster, and other slippery rat bastards at the top. We are being told it’s hard to tour and profit from shows because of fuel costs and venue costs and people aren’t interested. I call bullshit. 

Music and its audience are hot and heaving, people are making great music and an abundance of it. Regardless of the fact that people are broke, they still want to come smoke a ciggie, kiss a stranger, and listen to it. 

The idea that punters not going to a show on a Friday is the reason I’m struggling to make a living from music is the same school of thought that says my single-use coffee cup will stop all the damage being done to the climate by massive corporations. 

There are people responsible for me struggling as an artist and I want us to hold them accountable and I want it to happen now. 

Kiss, party, be gay, and do music. Jazmine Mary.