Church Musician Contract Template

In most cases, a church musician does not pass the test of being an independent contractor because of the control that the employer exercises over the musician's work.In addition to income taxes, you will also be responsible for paying both the employee's and employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Question: Do musicians pay taxes? Yes, if you're in a country that requires it, all musicians should pay taxes. Musicians do after all deal with an exchange in money, so taxes will need to be paid on these exchanges.If however you're an independent musician, you will need to sort paying taxes out by yourself.

There are people who believe musicians should not be paid because music is a ministry and therefore it must be done with volunteers. In some churches they pay their musicians and have no problem doing so.

Simplyhired.com lists the average yearly salaries for church musicians at $35,000. Church pianists in New York average $41,000 per year, and church pianists in New Orleans make $39,00 per year on average. A January 2010 job posting for ChristianJobs 1 offers an annual salary of $9,000 for a church pianist.

Most churches hire musicians on a part-time basis. At a large church, with five services, a musician might earn $100 per service; that's $500 a week or $26,000 a year. Music directors, on the other hand, usually need a degree in music theory or conducting to get a job.

Church musicians should be paid. Being a musician is a legitimate career path, therefore those who do it deserve to be paid for their services.It's quite cruel to believe that someone shouldn't be fairly compensated for dedicating 1025 hours of their time every week to the church.

While I certainly got some pushback, our decision aligns with the more recent cases affirming that most musicians and performers engaged by ministries are employees, even if they only perform for the Easter or Christmas program.

Recording company details (name, contact info) Artist details (group name, names of each artist, contact info) Production details, e.g. studio address, recording session dates, control over song selections on the recording, and control over album title.