What UK gigs really pay, taken apart — the wedding multiplier, the per-head curve, the 108-gig year and Commission Freedom Day, every figure live from the GigXchange Index’s advertised-rate cells.
6 signature stats · live advertised rates · free to cite
Last updated: 13 August 2026
The signature six
Six numbers nobody else publishes, each computed live from the GigXchange Index’s published cells — advertised UK rates, refreshed every 24 hours — with the working shown on every card. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0; every card has a one-click copy with attribution.
live
×2.1
A wedding gig pays 2.1 times a pub gig — median advertised UK rates of £758 vs £363. Part of the gap is headcount: weddings book bigger line-ups.
The median advertised pub gig (£363, whole act) as a share of the Musicians’ Union recommended pub minimum (£167.16 per member) — advertised grassroots rates vs the union floor.
What a solo act keeps per head — falling to £219/head in a 5+ piece on an equal split. Every extra member costs each musician money; the full curve is below.
Commission Freedom Day — the modelled date a musician on a traditional 20% agency commission stops working for the middleman each year. Booking direct moves it to 1 January. Find yours with the slider below.
GigXchange model, in the tradition of Tax Freedom Day — assumptions in the Index methodology
The per-head curve
Bigger acts gross more and keep less each. Median advertised fee by line-up size, divided equally (3–4 piece counted as 3.5 heads, 5+ as 6 — assumptions stated, arithmetic on the card).
Line-up
Median advertised fee
Per member
Sample
Solo
£281
£281
524
Duo
£446
£223
232
3–4 piece
£740
£211
2,239
5+ piece
£1,317
£219
663
By booking type
And the same medians cut by booking type — pub baseline first. This is the wedding multiplier's working.
live
£363
Median advertised UK fee for this booking type, all band sizes pooled — live from the Index’s published cells (pub/bar is the grassroots baseline the multiplier measures against).
Median advertised UK fee for this booking type, all band sizes pooled — live from the Index’s published cells (pub/bar is the grassroots baseline the multiplier measures against).
Median advertised UK fee for this booking type, all band sizes pooled — live from the Index’s published cells (pub/bar is the grassroots baseline the multiplier measures against).
Median advertised UK fee for this booking type, all band sizes pooled — live from the Index’s published cells (pub/bar is the grassroots baseline the multiplier measures against).
A modelled illustration in the tradition of Tax Freedom Day: at 20% commission on gross, a fully-agented musician works until 15 March for the middleman each year. Slide to your own commission and find your date — booking direct makes it 1 January.
15 MarchUntil then, every gig you play this year is working for the commission.
Model: day-of-year = 365 × commission share of gross fees. The 20% anchor is the same commission assumption used throughout the Index methodology, within the 10–25% range charged across the UK entertainment agency market. An illustration, not a measurement — most musicians’ true date falls between late February (15%) and mid-March (20%).
—Enter a fee to see its streaming equivalent.
Spotify publishes no official per-stream rate and explicitly disclaims the framing, so this is a range built on the £0.003–£0.004 third-party estimates cited in the DCMS streaming inquiry — not a payout you can hold anyone to. Fees come from the Index’s published cells.
Cite these figures — free under CC BY 4.0 with attribution: “GigXchange, Gig Pay Anatomy, 2026 — gigxchange.app/rates/gig-pay-anatomy” All rate figures are advertised rates from the Index’s published cells. Journalists: every card has a one-click Copy stat; custom cuts via gigxchange.app/press.
The searches these numbers answer, with the working shown.
On current advertised rates, the UK median wedding booking (£758) pays 2.1 times the median pub gig (£363). Weddings also book bigger line-ups, so part of the gap is headcount — the per-head curve on this page shows the rest.
108 pub gigs a year at the current median advertised pub rate — 2.1 every single week, before costs and tax. The comparison uses the ONS median full-time salary (£39,039).
Roughly 91,000–121,000 streams match the median UK pub gig fee, at industry-estimated per-stream artist payouts of £0.003–£0.004. Spotify publishes no official per-stream rate, which is why this is a range.
The median advertised pub gig (£363) sits at 217% of the MU recommended pub minimum (£167.16 per member). Remember these are advertised rates for whole acts vs a per-member minimum — the fine print on the card explains the comparison.
A modelled illustration in the tradition of Tax Freedom Day: the date a musician booking all work through a full-service agency at 20% commission stops working for the middleman each year — 15 March under the model. Book direct and it moves to 1 January. Use the slider on this page to find yours.
Mostly. A solo act keeps £281 against roughly £219 each in a 5+ piece on an equal split — but the curve is not a straight decline at every step on current rates. Bigger acts gross more and divide by more, and the largest line-ups command enough of a premium to claw some of it back.
Know your worth
Benchmark your rate against the live UK market, keep every penny of it, and get booked — free to join, free to list.
