All About That Bass & Pandora

I'm no mathematician but I think something's off with that 50% share math....

By my math that's .000052

I wish I could just take the software code to Spotify's website and use it for a streaming business of my own and just send them an amount I deem fair....

Who thinks Congress-both parties- are going to do anything? Songwriters in this issue are competing against the campaign financing from all these internet and media conglomerates. In this post Citizen's United "democracy" we live in, where politician are always campaigning and always need campaigning funds from major corporate moneymakers, songwriters don't have a chance.

Sorry for being the pessimist....

It just shows that those companies give a piss about copyright laws. They take your music pay you near to nothing, and they smile in your face. If that holds on writers will stop signing record deals, and will hold the master rights. The big labels should hurry up to find a solution for the writers, otherwise the wrters do not partner up anymore.......

Ward - My foreign royalties are consistently more than my domestic royalties...but there could be a reason for that. I had all my singles when I was at ASCAP. I moved to BMI because I was paid much less than my BMI co-writers...So, ASCAP still collects domestically for those singles. BMI now handles my foreign payment. My guess is that ASCAP consistently underpays me because I'm no longer an ASCAP member. But I have no recourse. I could hire a lawyer an audit and sue - but at $300 an hour...that makes little sense.

$964 is 25% of $3857. If there's a publisher, that works out correctly.

But the rate is pitiful. If it were $.01 per play, that'd be about half ASCAP's terrestrial radio for a hit record of that magnitude in the day, for publisher and writer. 

I was talking about the Pandora earnings for the co-write on "All About The Bass."

I'm ASCAP, and always have been, to read your experience I may well have missed out on substantial money. I've never co-written with a BMI writer, yet.

For my stuff, terrestrial radio still pays what it does, although broadcast rock radio is slowly going away. Over half my "airplay" is from TV, cable and film usage. iTunes pays well, it's by far the biggest digital income, but streaming doesn't. 

That's the rub, we all know streaming is going to be it at some point, and the deals in place don't adequately reward creators of content, especially publishing, which did well in the old regime. I think the labels may have sold out the artists for equity positions in some of the vendors, but I'm not sure about that, because I think labels would make more money fairly pricing their recordings than an equity stake in Spotify.

I make more domestically than international, but we never sold huge records outside the US. International is better now in the internet age than it used to be, go figure. Also completely unexpected was the income from cell phone ringtones (gone now, but it was something for a while,) and things like Guitar Hero, which came out of nowhere.

I hope some people still care about classic rock when I'm old and feeble and no longer touring.

The thing is, streaming services still compete with 'free' as in youtube. Yes, youtube pays something, but it should pay more. OTOH, how do you make a hit without people listening for free? The whole business model of recorded music is obsolete, that's the problem.