Raye: “Music? You don’t earn it. You break even with the tour”

You don’t make money with music. This is said by Raye, real name Rachel Agatha Keen, British singer-songwriter born in 1997, considered one of the brightest stars of the new soul scene across the Channel, who has 6 billion streams on Spotify worldwide and has obtained three nominations at the 2025 Grammy Awards. In an interview with Business Insider, the star spoke openly about balancing the books as an independent artist and sacrificing profits to serve her artistic vision:

There are ways to make easy money and ways to make profits. And trust me when I tell you that I am not following those ways.

Raye has just finished the tour linked to her album “My 21st Century Blues”. The price of organizing and putting on these shows, from travel expenses to lighting design and hiring a full band, was far from cheap, Raye said, but ultimately worth the investment:

We’re balancing the score. And it’s wonderful.

In 2014 Raye signed a four-album recording contract with Polydor. Seven years, four EPs and hundreds of thousands of streams later, the singer-songwriter has publicly accused the label of keeping her debut album locked in a drawer, begging record companies to release it. The following month it announced that it had been released from its contractual obligations with Polydor. Last year Raye released his first album as an independent artist, the aforementioned “My 21st Century Blues”: earlier this year the author triumphed at the Brit Awards, the most coveted music awards in the United Kingdom, winning six statuettes and thus setting a record for the most wins in a single evening.