Strictly's musicians dropped from show after pay row

Musicians for Strictly Come Dancing reveal they have been let go when they asked to be paid for a performance on the dancing show's sister programme, It Takes Two.

Instead, the band was offered a free lunch as well as a "decent" amount of screen time, to increase the group's social media presence.

The Italian music group, Amaraterra, were told that for their day's work on the behind-the-scenes TV show, producers could not pay them as the BBC didn't "have money in the budget to pay for contributors".

When the band members inquired about the agreement of salaries for work, agreed between the BBC and the Musician's Union, they found out that the show had dropped the group's performance.

A spokesperson for the BBC insisted that the decision to drop the group was due to editorial reasons and added that had the band played, they would have "of course" been paid.

Such expectations of musician's working for free, in exchange for exposure-only rewards, is something that those in the music industry have faced for a long time. And with the COVID-19 pandemic already threatening the survival of the arts and the availability of work opportunities for artists, musicians are struggling to make ends meet.

In an interview with the Guardian, Cassandre Balosso-Bardin, a member of Amaraterra, said: "We do not know when our next gig will be, and many of the band members are either furloughed or on universal credit. And the current Covid allowance for the self-employed (20% of your income), when 56% of musicians make less than £20,000 a year, is a pittance."