We interviewed Stephanie to go behind the scenes of her $300K/year career

You may have read today about how the Australian government believes Australian musicians are raking in around 300K a year, a conclusion brought about by the Jobs & Small Business section of the revamped 2015 Budget website featuring an area where you can look at examples of the kind of small business tax relief that can be found within a given industry. In the case of you, the young musician, when you look at  “Arts & Recreation Services” for an individual, the site gives the example of a woman named Stephanie, who “performs in a band that she runs as a small sole trader”, giving her a taxable income of $300,065. There's more gold, you can read it here, and being bored with too much time on our hands hardworking investigative journalists we tracked down Stephanie to find out how she's killing at as hard as she is, so we can learn a little more for your sake.

Hey Stephanie, nice to meet you and thanks for the chat, how are you today?

Great thanks Pilerats, how could I not be, I am literally swimming in cash*.

Yeah well that's why we wanted to hit you up! Most of the young Aussie musicians we know can barely afford to pay for a pack of champion ruby to help them at least look like a musician, yet you could buy, well, 10,000 packets of champion ruby if you wanted to!

I know it's crazy right. I just feel really blessed to be a part of this industry which has given me so much.

We read somewhere you're actually in 5 Seconds Of Summer as a silent, very rich partner. Although that's obviously someone just having a laugh on Marc Fennel's Twitter, can you tell us a bit more about the band you're actually in?

Unfortunately I would prefer not to divulge that information at the moment. We've already had such a great success, I feel like this may tarnish our image and people will stop buying the literally millions of records it takes for me to earn this much money each year.

But you can confirm you're in a band?

Yes, I am.

How many people are actually in your band?

There's myself and four others.

Hold up, does that mean your band is actually earning in excess of $1.5million/year?!

Something along those lines, yeah... To be honest once we hit the six figure mark it gets really hard to keep track of things LOL! Plus I'm much thriftier than the rest of my band. They're all running around doing stupid shit like investing in wind turbines, idiots.

No doubt no doubt. From the photo on the government website you seem like a really humble, no-fuss musician.

I like to think so, and it's kind of why I agreed to let them use my photo. I wanted other Australian musicians who weren't hitting that 300K mark to really re-asses what they were doing with their career. I mean, I'm just a lowly example, real bottom of the rung. Even so, I never want for anything, but if I do, I also get some great tax kick-backs just by making so much money. It's a win-win situation really.

The example given above points out the kind of tax cuts you'll receive when you buy an electric guitar, but in the photo you're holding an acoustic guitar. Did you just pretend to buy an electric guitar so you'd get the kick-back, then return the electric guitar and essentially earn yourself an extra $1000 on top of that $300,000 per year you're already raking in?

Uh, no. And I'm kind of offended you'd make that suggestion.

Alright we'll put a pin in that one for now. Seen as we know a lot (see 99%) of Australian musicians could only ever dream about a $300K/year salary, can you give us some tips on what they should be doing to get their career where it needs to be?

First of all I'd get a promo photo taken that I would then put on Getty Images, and you'll find lazy governments who could give zero fucks about anything but themselves will give you up to $700 to use that photo. Any money you do make, don't waste it on things like renewable energy, because that sector is on the out, man. Thirdly, if you buy anything up to the value of $20,000 (for instance, the $18,000 acoustic guitar you see in my photo), that shit is automatically tax deductible.

Alright Stephanie, well this has been enlightening, thankyou.

No thank you guys, and to all those "struggling" musicians out there, get over it, hey. It's really not that hard to become massively successful, and make heaps of cash. Just believe in yourself, and get some sweet stock photos done, ASAP.

You can follow Stephanie's journey HERE.

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*Actual photo of Stephanie playing at home: