can musicians still rely on that other kind of gig in 2026?

By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio

Traditionally, when musicians talk about “gigs,” they’re talking about opportunities to play or sing. Today, they might be talking about their music, or they might be talking about some work they’re doing to support themselves while they wait for paying music gigs, or temporary work taken on to finance a project. While “gig work” can be used to refer to any type of short-term work, people most often use the term to refer to signing up to work for companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, GrubHub, or a website offering  single online tutoring sessions or other short-term projects. 

Just a few short years ago, this type of gig work seemed like the perfect resource for musicians. The work was plentiful, and appeared to be much less energy and time consuming than most day jobs. It seemed you really could sign up, pass your background check, complete any other orientation materials the company required, log on, and start making the money you needed to make your next album or buy some new instruments or equipment. Some people even launched whole new careers as online language teachers or built their delivery driving into a thriving business that allowed them to pay all of their bills. YouTube exploded with channels hosted by people reporting gig work income in the thousands per month and offering lessons and guidance on how their audience members could follow in their footsteps.

Today, nearly all of the ride and delivery companies and a few of the online tutoring and other short-term project websites still exist, but both the income potential and the demands are very different today. 

Down times/wait times are growing longer and longer

The flood of workers signing on to gig platforms would have been great if the number of customers would have increased in equal or greater proportion, allowing plenty of work for everyone who wanted to deliver, drive, tutor or complete a quick project for a fee. It didn’t. Even some of the busiest gig-based apps don’t always have enough work to go around.

For the musician delivering or driving to fund a project or pay the bills between paying music gigs, this amounts to a lot of time spent “at work” for no money. One online tutoring website that closed early this year boasted that their tutors made $16.00 per hour, with an unlimited amount of hours available to them. While this was technically true, it only really meant that tutors could sit logged in to the website for as many hours as they wished. They were only paid for time spent in active tutoring sessions or per essay evaluated. It was not only possible, but typical, to log in, sit waiting for two or three hours until offered a session, lose the session to another tutor, finally get one a few minutes later, work for an hour, and then wait several more hours for the next session. Uber drivers have reported similar experiences, extended time spent sitting in their cars for no pay, waiting to be offered a customer who needed a ride.

Rideshare and delivery companies are offering bonuses, cashback programs, and surcharges to help workers pay for gas….but it may not be enough

Gig workers are independent contractors, and as independent contractors, are responsible for paying their own costs of doing business. If you offer rides or deliveries, part of that cost of doing business is going to include paying for gas for the car you use. The major rideshare and delivery companies are reportedly offering their contractors some financial assistance to help defray these costs as gas prices continue to rise, but they’re certainly not going to cover it all. The more gas prices increase, the more that particular business expense is going to cut into your profit.

Drivers and delivery people must also pay for their own signs, cleaning supplies for inside the car, bags to carry orders, and any extras they wish to offer, such as water or candy to offer to customers. The cost of these items also continues to rise, and to cut into drivers’ profits. This is just one more way that you may wind up working for a lot less money than you originally estimated. 

In 2026, driving jobs are increasingly the only ones available

Driving jobs have always been the best-known forms of gig work, but they used to be just one option among many. Companies based in China seemed to multiply daily, offering people who wanted to do gig work without driving the opportunity to teach ESL to children online instead. Mixed media platforms such as Fiverr offered gig workers the chance to offer very short-term writing, drawing, or planning projects from home. Multiple companies offered tutors a place to do gig work. Anyone who didn’t want to deal with gas prices, increased insurance, and paying for cleaning supplies and bottles of water could simply choose a different form of gig work. 

Today, many of those non-driving companies still exist, but fewer and fewer of them are available. Those Chinese ESL companies are long gone, most shut down by a single order of the leader of China several years ago. U.S-based sites offering short-term work still exist, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to be accepted onto their platforms Those who do manage to sign on find that customers are no longer hiring freelancers to do small projects, and are instead simply running prompts through AI bots and taking the free slop. Few tutoring session sites remain in business. Gig work that involves driving is often the only real option left. This of course takes us right back to the decreased profits due to increased costs associated with driving gig work.

Those who are already working for one of these gig work platforms may want to keep them active as ways to generate some spare cash from time to time, but they may not be a viable option to fund larger projects or to replace the income from a traditional day job, even if they were able to serve this purpose just a few years ago.