1 July 2026 · Payday super is law
Musos finally get super.
The paperwork is killing gigs.
Super has to reach every player's fund within seven business days of the gig. Musopay makes that a few minutes' work — one click turns a gig into the bank file, the super file and the audit records, ready to upload.
Your details, once. Every gig, sorted.
Super paid in minutes.
FREE FOREVER to be paid and receive your super. No exceptions, no fine print.
How it works
If you play
- Enter your details once. Bank, super fund, TFN — encrypted, logged, yours.
- Accept a bandleader with one tap. Or share your personal link in your email signature — that's it, you're connected.
- Get paid properly. Fee to your bank, super to your fund, and a running record of every contribution ever made for you. Come tax time, it's all there.
If you run the gig
- Invite your players once. Email, QR at rehearsal, whatever. They enter their own details — you never chase a super fund USI (or SPIN) again.
- Create the gig, set the fees. The app calculates every player's super and your real total cost on the spot.
- Download the payment pack. One file for your bank, one for your clearing house, an audit record per player, and a checklist with your deadlines. Pay, upload, done.
Musopay never touches the money. It moves from your bank to theirs — we just make the files and keep the records.
The festival that didn't cancel
A volunteer committee. Three stages. Three hundred musicians. Under payday super, that's three hundred super funds, three hundred calculations, and a seven-business-day fuse — the kind of admin that makes committees fold a forty-year-old festival rather than risk getting it wrong.
With Musopay: every player gets an invite link with their booking. They connect themselves. The committee attaches them to the event, downloads one pack — one bank file, one clearing house file, three hundred audit records — and administers the whole thing in an afternoon.
Running an event? Sign up and say so — we'll be in touch about per-event pricing and hands-on help.
What do I quote the venue?
Super is 12% on top of the fee — if you quote like it's 2025, the super comes out of your players' pockets. Use this before you answer the venue. Free, no signup.
What actually happens when you pay
No mystery, no magic. Musopay makes two files; you use them with your own bank and your own clearing house. Here's the whole thing, with real examples you can open right now.
1 Download your payment pack
One click per gig. You get an audit record for every musician, a summary with your deadlines, and the two files below.
⤓ Example audit record (PDF) ⤓ Example summary & checklist (PDF)
2 Pay the fees — the bank file
The .aba file is the batch-payment format every Australian bank's internet banking accepts ("import payment file", usually under business payments). Upload it, approve it, and every musician's fee leaves your account in one batch — no typing BSBs at midnight. It's a plain text file; open the example in any editor.
3 Pay the super — the clearing house file
You can't bank-transfer super to a fund — the law requires contributions to arrive electronically with member data attached, via SuperStream. A clearing house is the service that makes this practical: you upload one CSV (the standard "SAFF" format, which Musopay generates) and make one payment, and it splits the money across all your musicians' different funds with the data each fund needs.
⤓ Example clearing house upload (SAFF CSV) — this exact file is what you send them
4 Mark it done
Tell Musopay when you've paid and when the super's submitted. Until then, we track your legal deadline and send escalating reminders — after it, everyone has an audit trail forever.
Which clearing house? You probably already have one
Most big super funds give employers a free clearing house that pays into any fund — not just their own. The usual entry ticket is registering as an employer with the fund (free), sometimes nominating them as your default fund — which every employer is required to pick anyway:
- Rest — "Rest Pay": free for Rest default employers; upload the SAFF file Musopay makes, pay once, done.
- AustralianSuper — Employer Portal: free for registered employers (registering is free); SAFF accepted.
- Australian Retirement Trust — Employer Online: free with ART as your default fund; the most flexible on file formats.
- Hostplus, Cbus & HESTA (QuickSuper): free for registered employers of the fund — Cbus and HESTA even support instant Osko/PayID payment.
- Australian Ethical — EmployerPay: free while you register through Australian Ethical's own link, because they cover the fees as your sponsor; SAFF native. Sign up through the generic EmployerPay form instead and the fees land back on you, so use the fund's link.
- Want zero fund relationship? Wrkr PAY: the no-strings commercial option — $5.50–$7.70/month incl GST for small crews, self-service signup, SAFF native. (It's also the engine behind Rest Pay and AustralianSuper's portal.)
Checked July 2026 against each provider's published pages — eligibility and terms live with the providers, so confirm when you register.
Worth knowing: the law counts super as paid when the fund receives it, and clearing houses usually take 1–3 business days to pass it on. Those days come out of your 7 — so every Musopay pack shows a "submit by" date with that buffer already built in. (Paying someone's fund for the first time? The law allows 20 business days for that one.)
Pricing without surprises
Getting paid is free, always.
Paying a band is the part that costs — and while we're in beta, that's free too.
Pricing here goes by which side of the gig you're on, because most people are on both at different times. Getting paid for a gig is free every time. You're only charged for the gigs where you're the one paying everyone else.
Getting paid
Free forever
Unconditional. When you're the one being paid for a gig, you're never billed for it — your details, your audit trail, your control. That holds however many gigs you also run yourself.
Paying a band
Free up to 5 musician-payments/mo
then $15/month unlimited
A musician-payment is one muso paid for one gig — so 5 a month covers one five-piece gig, or five solo bookings, whichever way your month falls. Your usage meter is always on screen. It's free for everyone while we're in beta.
Festivals & orgs
Per event
Bulk invites, hundreds of musicians, one pack. Talk to us — around $1.50 per musician-payment.
…and what the alternatives cost
- A bookkeeper runs $80–150/hour, and a gig batch isn't a five-minute job.
- Payroll platforms price per-employee and treat your musos as staff — try onboarding a 300-player festival lineup as employees.
- Getting it wrong triggers the Super Guarantee Charge: interest compounding daily at the ATO's general interest charge rate (currently ~11.4% p.a.), an administrative uplift of up to 60% on top, and 25–50% penalties if it still doesn't get paid. The paperwork you skipped becomes the most expensive part of the gig.
$15 a month is the cheapest line on this page.
Your details are yours
- No directory. No search. Ever. A bandleader can only see musicians who explicitly connected with them.
- Encrypted where it counts. TFNs, bank accounts, birthdates and member numbers are encrypted with keys that never touch the database. A stolen database is gibberish.
- Every access logged. Each time your details go into a payment file, you can see who, when, and what for.
- Consent you can withdraw. Disconnect a bandleader anytime — access ends immediately, only already-generated records remain.
- Real deletion. Delete your account and your personal data is destroyed, not archived.
Straight answers
My musos invoice with ABNs — surely they're contractors?
For super, no. Under s12(8) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, someone paid to perform music is an employee of whoever pays them — for super purposes — even when they invoice as a sole trader. That's been the law since 1992; payday super just added a deadline with teeth.
Already run payroll for staff?
Keep it. Musopay handles your contractor musicians alongside your payroll, not instead of it — your employees stay in your payroll software, your musos get sorted here.
Does the money go through Musopay?
Never. You pay from your own bank account and submit super through your own clearing house. Musopay generates the files, does the math, tracks the deadlines and keeps the records. That's deliberate — it keeps your money yours.
What about a band that's a company or a partnership?
Payments to a genuine company, trust or partnership don't attract super — the deeming rule catches a person paid to perform, and none of those is a person. Partnerships are the ones most often missed: a band trading under a partnership ABN sits on this side of the line, not the sole trader side. Mark the payee as an entity and the files label it clearly, with no super calculated. (Whether the arrangement is genuine is worth checking with your adviser.)
Which clearing house do I need?
Any of the majors — the super file Musopay generates is the standard SAFF format they all accept. See the options and costs above, including the free ones many super funds provide.
Ready when you are
One email, no password — we'll send you a sign-in link and you're in. Getting paid is always free, and while we're in beta so is everything else.
Already signed up? The same form signs you back in.
Joining early — what that means
Musopay is in beta. It's live and people are running real gigs through it, and it's also young: some screens will get clearer, some features are still being built, and you may hit the odd bug. Tell us when you do — early reports decide what gets fixed first.
It's free for everyone while we're in beta.
We'll give you plenty of notice before that changes, and nothing starts costing you money without you choosing it first.
How we look after your details isn't changing. Tax file numbers, bank account numbers, dates of birth and super member numbers are encrypted with keys held outside the database, and only ever appear masked on screen. Every time a detail goes into a payment file, the musician sees it in their own access log. There's no directory and no search — a bandleader only ever sees musicians who accepted an invite. How we handle your details.
Get in touch
Found a bug, got stuck, or want to ask something before you sign up? This reaches us directly. If something looked wrong on screen, a screenshot helps enormously — it usually turns a long back-and-forth into a quick fix.