Short answer: Yes, most working musicians should incorporate once they’re earning consistently outside their union wages. It protects your personal stuff, your savings, your home, if something goes wrong, and it opens up tax write-offs you can’t get as a regular freelancer. I didn’t understand any of this until 2021, when I finally formed my own company. I wish I’d done it a decade earlier.
Let me back up and tell you what actually pushed me to do it. It wasn’t a business class. It was watching my father get sick.
My dad ended up in a nursing home, and I got handed all of it. The paperwork. The fees. The state regulations. I learned something fast: when you own things in your own name, especially a house, the state can come after them to pay for long-term care. If he’d moved the deed to that house into someone else’s name years earlier, none of that would’ve touched it.
That hit me hard. It wasn’t about music at all. It was about protecting what you build, so life doesn’t just take it from you later. That’s when I really understood why you separate your personal life from your business life. On paper, and legally.
I used to think incorporating was for people running “real” businesses. Not musicians. Not me. Then I formed Broadway Drumming 101 Inc., and everything changed. Gear, travel, rehearsal space, all the stuff I was already spending money on? Suddenly those were legitimate business write-offs. I wasn’t just a guy playing gigs anymore. I was running a media company, an education brand, and a platform.
Here’s what changed for me, in plain terms. It protects your personal assets: if you’re not incorporated and someone sues you, they can come after your personal money and belongings, but incorporating draws a real line between what’s yours and what belongs to the business. It saves you money on taxes: as an S Corp, I pay myself a salary and take the rest as a distribution, which cuts down on self-employment tax and saved me thousands, on top of software, marketing tools, and part of my home office becoming deductible. People take you more seriously once you have an actual business name. And you get access you didn’t have before, a business credit card, a SEP IRA, small business grants and loans, which can be the thing that gets you through a slow season.
Here’s the honest caveat: incorporating doesn’t change what you are under your union contract. If you’re a Broadway musician working under the Local 802 AFM collective bargaining agreement, like most of us are, your Broadway paycheck comes to you as a W-2 employee of the show, not as a contractor you can route through your own company. Forming an LLC or an S Corp doesn’t change that classification, and it can’t. The CBA determines how you’re paid for the show itself, full stop.
What incorporating actually helps with is everything outside that CBA paycheck. Teaching. Licensing. Content. Consulting. Book sales. Any income you generate as yourself, outside your union wages, is where a business entity earns its keep.
And if you’re not generating meaningful income outside your day gig yet, be honest about the cost-benefit here. Setting up an LLC or an S Corp isn’t free. There are filing fees, and an S Corp especially comes with real accounting overhead, since you have to run payroll and pay yourself a “reasonable salary.” If you’re not making enough outside your union wages to justify that cost and complexity yet, it might not be worth doing today. It might be worth doing in a year.
For me, everything changed in 2021, when I started, and I never looked back. I’m still a W-2 employee of the Shubert Organization, playing Cats: The Jellicle Ball, that part didn’t change. But I also have Broadway Drumming 101 Inc., which runs my podcast, this newsletter, my courses, and my educational content, and C.R.A.D. Global Ventures LLC, the umbrella company that holds everything else I do outside the pit, publishing, licensing, consulting, and future ventures. Neither of those touch my Broadway paycheck. They exist entirely alongside it.
Think about the entertainers who’ve built real empires beyond just their instrument or their voice, the ones who are also producers, label owners, brand partners, executives. Almost all of that runs through separate business entities, not their personal name. There’s a phrase you hear a lot in those circles: “I’m not just an artist. I’m a business.” Once you clear the bar of having real income outside your union wages, that’s the shift worth making.
If you know a musician who’s still operating like a sole proprietor and taking on way more risk than they need to, forward them this email. This is the kind of thing that’s easier to hear from a friend than to figure out alone at 1 AM.
This is Chapter 10 of my book, Broadway Bound and Beyond: A Musician’s Guide to Building a Theater Career — “Why Musicians Should Incorporate and Think Like Entrepreneurs.” I go much deeper there into how I structure things, what an S Corp actually looks like in practice, and the exact lessons I picked up watching my father. And if you want the full system, not just the mindset, I’m building it out step by step in Broadway Bound and Beyond: The Course — The Career Foundation Every Working Musician Needs (But Nobody Teaches). Coming soon.
Have you incorporated your music career yet, or is it still just you and a bunch of 1099s? Tell me where you’re at in the comments.
I’m not a lawyer or an accountant. This is what worked for me and what I’ve learned firsthand, not professional legal or tax advice. Talk to a CPA or entertainment attorney before you set up your own entity.
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