Think of insurance and most people will think of insurance for their home or their car. After all, motor insurance is compulsory and many people insure their home as it is likely their most valuable asset.
Turn your mind to insuring yourself as an amateur or professional musician though and for many it’s an unheard of concept. Many assume playing an instrument isn’t as risky a hobby or profession as skydiving or race car driver and as you’re reasonably static when performing, what could go possibly go wrong?
There are many reasons why insuring yourself and your instruments with a low cost policy is a prudent investment should anything untoward happen to you, your audience or equipment when performing.
Theft and loss
Just like your car can be stolen, unfortunately many musicians have a tale about the loss of an expensive instrument both in terms of financial and sentimental cost. Whether your instruments are being left overnight in a van or car, at the venue or when being transported from home to venue, without insurance there’s a risk you’ll be left with a big bill should the worst happen.
Additionally, it’s very difficult to trace specific instruments back to their original owners, making it much easier for thieves to sell them on with a slim likelihood of it ever being successfully returned to its rightful owner.
Accidental damage
We all take great care of our instruments but unfortunately, despite all the precautions we can take, we’re human after all and accidents do happen. So if your amp does accidentally get turned up to 11 and explode or you drop your favourite bass guitar and damage its neck, you could be looking at a painfully large bill to fix or replace the damage done.
Choose a reputable insurer however, and their policy will cover the cost of repairing the damage or even replace new for old if the instrument(s) in question are younger than three years old. insure4music will even replace new for old on 18 months or younger laptops for all you DJs out there.
Public liability
As well as there being a chance you can accidentally damage your beloved instruments, there’s always the risk that you may in some way shape or form cause injury or damage to a third party when performing.
To help protect yourself from potentially very expensive claims, you will want a specialised musician insurer who offers both public liability cover and professional indemnity cover. Public liability cover does just that – it’ll help protect you should you injure a person(s) or damage third party property during the course of teaching or performing. Similarly professional indemnity help protect you from legal liability should you have given any negligent advice.
Tip of the iceberg
Music is about enjoyment for not just you but also your pupils or audience, and one of way keeping it fun is to have peace of mind that if anything untoward were to happen, you’re sufficiently covered.
It’s important to remember that many household policies exclude instruments and if you do wish to cover them under that policy, it will often increase your premium beyond the cost of a specialist music policy. To make matters worse, should your instrument ever be outside of your home, you won’t be covered and if you did ever make a claim, you would lose your no claims bonus for your household.
A good specialist music insurer will go beyond the three discussed elements of a strong policy to include such items as loss of earnings if you’re unable to perform, equipment breakdown cover, musical equipment hire while waiting for your replacement or even personal accident cover if you injure yourself or worse.
Please note the information provided on this page should not be taken as advice and has been written as a matter of opinion. For more on insurance cover and policy wording, see our homepage.
