#WeDon'tPlay - Our Minimum Conditions of Work Launch

Current Conditions

For too long, musicians have had to accept the terms of work offered to them by venues and promoters, while having no recourse when those are not honoured. Musicians are not always recognised as workers – music is often seen as a hobby or entertainment – but for those who make all or some of their living from playing live gigs this has led to precarious and often unfavourable working situations. AHCOM takes the position that music is work! Musicians require the same things everyone else does to sustain our lives (pay rent, buy food, pay school fees and medical bills, etc.), and have specific costs necessary to fund our craft (buy and repair instruments, hire rehearsal space, and travel to and from gigs, etc.).

The current model of work in live music often fails to recognise these realities. Contracts are not provided or honoured, hidden costs reduce our earnings, door deals are opaque or unfavourable, facilities and infrastructure are often inadequate, sustenance is not provided, and communication is poor. Our working conditions are unsustainable and often exploitative. Responding to this situation is complex because of the scattered and disparate ways in which musicians work – at multiple different venues, on a gig-by-gig basis – making it difficult to bring musicians together.

Our Conditions Of Work:

Our Conditions Of Work is the outcome of a process of musicians coming together to share, reflect on, and critically engage the conditions under which we work as live performers. Over the course of 2025, in a series of workshops and meetings, we held discussions focused on the structural factors that shape our work under capitalism in Cape Town – racism, sexism, spatial apartheid, unequal access, and challenges of transport – as well as the specific components of the live music economy – venues, promoters, festivals etc. We shared experiences of performing in various venues, being underpaid and disrespected by certain promoters, and discussed which venues we enjoyed playing at and why.

Through that process we collected and debated all of our demands and put them into a single document: Our Conditions Of Work, which expresses what we, as working musicians, believe forms a fair basis for work engagements. This includes things like: receiving water on stage, providing a safe space to store our instruments at gigs, insisting on being paid within 7 days of a gig, clear guidelines on who should cover sound expenses, and many other things. It is not a complete solution, but serves as a good-faith basis for negotiation with promoters. It represents an independent and collective statement from working musicians that music is work! It is a necessary starting point outlining our key demands and calling for an urgent shift in how our labour is valued, supported, and compensated.

AHCOM:

While the document itself is important, even more important is the process of independently building a community of musicians who formulate and articulate our own demands and positions. The Ad Hoc Committee for Organising Musicians (AHCOM) is a group of committed music workers who have come together to organise the launch of Our Conditions Of Work. We are running a campaign to mobilise support for Our Conditions of Work. This will run for a month in the lead up to the launch event of the document on Saturday 16 May 2026.

Support the WE DON’T PLAY campaign:

We understand that musicians in other parts of South Africa, Africa, and the world at large face similar challenges, and we understand our plights to be connected to theirs and those of other workers in general. We are not the first group of music or cultural workers to organise in this way; in fact, we have learnt from many other struggles in our context and in others. We hope to continue learning from the struggles of other cultural workers near and far – and we hope that others take inspiration from ours.

If you are a fellow musician in Cape Town, or someone from further afield who supports our campaign, you can do the following:

1. READ and engage with Our Conditions Of Work (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k7F1PfciFKR39F3b7Iv8moUzAZt0WML3/view)
2. SUPPORT by adding your signature as a fellow Cape Town-based musician or someone in solidarity with our struggle (https://forms.gle/4GPCSQsaQzawezdb9).
3. SHARE the above with other people, and on social media by using the hashtags #WeDontPlay and #MusicIsWork.
4. ATTEND our launch. Note – the launch is free to attend but please book a free ticket as a means of RSVP. If you are able to donate some money to cover the costs of the launch, please do so by buying a ticket and entering an amount.

Please read the document, sign to show your support, share with your friends and comrades and attend our launch!

#WeDontPlay #MusicIsWork

For press and other queries, email AHCOM at: [email protected]

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/AHCOMCPT