1 July 2026 · Payday super is law
Musos finally get super.
The paperwork is killing gigs.
Seven business days to get super into every player's fund, every gig, or the ATO starts charging interest. Festivals are cancelling. Bandleaders are drowning in spreadsheets. It doesn't have to be like this.
Your details, once. Every gig, sorted.
Super paid in minutes, not evenings.
FREE FOREVER for musicians receiving 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 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? Get in touch for per-event pricing — bring your whole lineup.
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.
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.
- 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.
One timing truth to respect: the law counts super as paid when the fund receives it, and clearing houses take roughly 1–3 business days to pass it on. That transit time is inside your 7 business days — which is why every Musopay pack shows a "submit by" date with the buffer already built in. (First-ever contribution for a new musician or fund? The law allows 20 business days for that one.)
Pricing without surprises
Musicians
Free forever
Unconditional. You're the reason this exists. Your details, your audit trail, your control — never a bill.
Bandleaders
Free up to 5 payments/mo
then $15/month unlimited
A musician-payment is one muso paid for one gig. Your usage meter is always on screen — the limit is never a surprise. Free while in beta; founding users keep a locked-in rate.
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?
Payments to a genuine company or trust don't attract SG. 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.
Get in before the first deadline bites
We're onboarding a small group of real bands and one real festival first. Leave your email and tell us which one you are.
One confirmation email, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.