Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write | Hacker News Reader

Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

bbc.co.uk

314 pointsmellosouls352 comments

A friend of mine decided to pursue music production around the same time I started in software engineering. We're both 20 somethings. We swap war stories now and then.

I get to hear about how he's working with his mentor to do vocal production on a track getting pitched for Maroon 5, The Chainsmokers, etc. Sometimes the tracks take -- the artist likes them and decides to move forward. Usually they don't and it's a lot of getting your hopes up for nothing. These major artists have lots of songs getting thrown at them on any given day. To date some of my friends biggest credits are vocal production credits on a couple billboard top 100s. A single track will have 50 names on it between writing, production, studio performance, etc.

My friend's mentor is late 30s and mainly does songwriting. He's been trying to do a solo thing but just isn't marketable. However, just recently he "made" it with a feature on a top 100 song and a couple songs picked up by major artists. The checks cleared this last year but the songs came out a couple years ago. He went from "how do I pay rent" to 7M literally over night. He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax. My friend has been able to tie a couple big checks together over the years, but it's been tough. One year it's 100k, the next it's 20k and all from ads and random tv shows.

I'm consistently shocked when talking with my friend just how little music matters in the music industry. The people who make the most look good, sound good, and hell they're crazy talented. But they aren't the people who've written the lyrics or the melodies that define our culture. We probably can't name those people.

Anecdote: My dad was in the music industry in the 80s, and he knew song writers. He joked about how funny it was to hear, for example, a (male) friend singing a demo of “Like A Virgin.”

Fascinating, can you share which song(s) he "made it" with?

Nice try, California department of revenue

"Actually, we're called the CA Franchise Tax Boa- ahh fuck"

He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax

If he waited for the big check before he made that move, CA will find him - it's not where you live when you got the check, it's where you live when you earned it.

+1, moving intentionally to avoid this is asking for a lot of trouble, especially for a bill that large. I hope he consulted his financial advisors.

No kidding! CA’s tax man is among the most aggressive I’ve ever encountered. If you move to the Sahara desert to try to avoid paying, they’ll have someone waiting in a sand dune to jump out and hand you the bill as you walk by.

> I hope he consulted his financial advisors

and if he did, he'd learn that 5 minutes of estate planning makes it ridiculously easy to avoid having any trouble, especially for a bill that large

so if you know, you know

if you don't, then you might find yourself bombarded by misinformation regarding the music industry, and state taxes on a programming forum

What is the 5 minute fix that would allow someone to escape tax liability for income earned (but not yet received) while working in California?

It would take 5 minutes to synthesize the answer after a much longer time of studying the universe of possibilities.

The financial advisor should be able to provide that.

What is any 5 minute answer to the problem from any of the possibilities?

A) Moving to a state with no income tax for half a year. But that just saves upwards of 12%.

B) Having more than 7M in already-taxed money and spending that on things that supported his own business. When you are doing something you love it feels no different than consumptive spending on a bunch of toys. The spending is tax deductible against the 7M he earned that year. Nothing goes to the government. Ideally he monetizes it to a greater amount in a future year and pays taxes in that future, but its only his problem if he doesn't monetize.

C) Having more than 7M in borrowed funds and spending that on things that supported his own business. Now both the spending and the interest payments are tax deductible against the 7M he earned that year. Nothing, goes to the government. Ideally he monetizes it to a greater amount in a future year and pays taxes in that future, but its only his problem if he doesn't monetize, and maybe the people he borrowed from.

D) Constructively structuring the payment as a capital gain, and moving to Puerto Rico under Act 60. This nullifies state and federal tax, while staying compliant under the federal government and the territory and prior state. This would involve talking with the organization that would pay you, maybe they could give you a share grant of the same amount, or of a discounted product they sell. Distinctly not 5 minutes. This actually might be easy since the royalty rights can already be bought and sold separately than the royalty payment.

E) Selling the rights to royalties to your own private foundation. 5 minutes if you already have a private foundation. Not 5 minutes if you don't. If you want to be liquid you can always pay yourself a modest or fantastic salary from the foundation, which is taxed. Either way, now you only need tax deductions against the much smaller salary while the rest of the liquidity can be invested or just sit there. (There is something equivalent to a 2% tax on the royalty received, and an annual 5% charitable contribution requirement. Still better than 12% and much better than 37% + 12% + self employment tax%)

as you might notice, all of this works no matter what the tax rates are or become, but people in your party that know this will nod and agree with whatever sentiment you have anyway. The politics typically only results in taxing salaried employees slightly higher or slightly lower.

so, most people would be prepared for option A) but its not hard to structure your life for the other options to become options. the trickier part is the big payment. its not supposed to be a "tax dodge" its just understanding why the tax rate can be 0%. Many people's tax experience is opening up Turbotax and crossing their fingers for a refund as the numbers spin like a slot machine, others of us know exactly what should be computed and have pushed chess pieces all year for it.

Perhaps it's naive of me, but I can't help but look down on this kind of behavior. I know that tax money is rarely spent in the most efficient way possible, but (ideally) the point of taxes is that they go to benefit the general public. Moving just so one doesn't have to pay as much, after (presumably) living in the state for some time feels selfish and greedy.

Of course it’s greedy, but on the other hand wouldn’t you be crazy to not try to get out of paying millions in taxes?

Though it's not millions in this case, the top marginal tax rate in CA is 12%, so he's saving at most $850K if this was a one-time $7M payment.

Not sure that 12% is worth picking up my family and moving to another state if that's the only reason to relocate. CA and WA weather and lifestyle is much different than what he saw in Southern California (I'm guessing that's where he lived since he was in the music industry).

I made that move (from SF Bay Area to Seattle) about 5 years ago (but for work, not taxes), and I'm thinking about going back to CA for the milder winters.

850k is worth moving to another state for a year, especially if this is not repeatable income, but that’s just me.

I think it'd have to be more than a year if you really want to escape taxation. If you leave the state, earn $7M, then move back a year later, California is going to be taking a close look at when you actually earned that money.

Though moving is easier and cheaper for a single person living in an apartment than someone with a family and house.

If it's legit, why does it matter? Presumably that person's song took off and they were able to forecast that they'd make $X, which was worth the move to WA.

If he's moving to escape taxation, it's not legit (in the eyes of the Franchise Tax Board), and if he did the work while he was living in California, they're going to want (and almost certainly will get) their share.

You only have to relocate for a maximum 6 months and 1 day. As in, your US address needs to be in the lower tax state.

So, if its after June when your windfall hits, that particular option is removed and you have to focus on offsetting deductions.

But it resets January 1, every year :)

No, because (again, ideally) those taxes are going to be used to benefit the common good.

Trying to get out of paying them would be like saying, "of course I should get help from everyone else for education, housing, infrastructure, etc., but goodness forbid I actually return the favor later on so that others get the same benefit!"

Anyway, it's not like such taxes take away so much of your earnings that you're left with a pittance. At some point you have to ask yourself, "is the amount of happiness I gain from keeping this amount of money worth more than the various things it will be spent on, and the benefit it will give to others?"

(I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode, "The Last of The Red Hat Mamas, where Mr Burns pledges to donate money to a children's hospital, but then uses it extend his own life instead - by 10 minutes[0])

It's a sign of the sad state of things that taxes are treated more like throwing money away, than being a resource used for the common good.

[0] https://youtu.be/-Icbia3fDuY?t=45

Some states actually have laws specifically to prevent this.

For example, if you work remote for a company based in NY, PA, CT, DE, AR, or NE; your income is taxable in that state regardless of where you live or work. This is known as a "convenience of the employer" test. In fact, before a certain SCOTUS ruling you couldn't even claim a refund on that tax for your residence state's tax return (and even after, that refund is taxable).

California is already considering a wealth exit tax that would apply 10 years worth of tax nexus to anyone who leaves the state. I'd complain about this more, as it goes against the whole concept of freedom of movement... but the US already does the same thing. Emigrate from the US and you'll still be expected to pay US taxes on foreign income. I've heard there's a rule that exempts you from said taxes if you spend the entire tax year outside the US. Some people also take the really risky step of throwing out their US citizenship... which is actually grounds to be permanently banned from entering the US for any reason if they find out that you did so for tax purposes.

I worked for a company based in NY and had to certify every year that I worked in NY state for less than 10 days a year. If I couldn't make that certification, then I would have owed the state taxes.

> Emigrate from the US and you'll still be expected to pay US taxes on foreign income.

That's because you still have U.S. citizenship. You can give that up and not be taxed, as I understand it.

Also, it looks like there are provisions to give you exclusions on your foreign income,if you have any.[1] That seems sane to me, if you live their the whole year and that location is your tax base, then you can exclude all the income from their in your U.S. taxes. But living elsewhere won't protect you from U.S. taxes if you still have the benefit of U.S. citizenship and make a lot of money from the U.S.

California considering a wealth exit tax seems a bit different on first glance, but I could see it making sense if it's somewhat similar in use. If you make your money from California and continue to after moving from there to elsewhere, that money being eligible to be taxed by California because otherwise it's extracting the benefit of California's laws and markets without paying into the system that provides them.

1: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

As a Brit, I can work wherever I can find work (and legally work) around the world, earn a fortune and not pay any tax in the UK, /and/ keep my citizenship. I only would pay tax to the UK on income I earn here (which in itself leads to all kinds of strange and dodgy scenarios in terms of people avoiding paying taxes here)

This is ultimately political and comes down to perspective and opinion. As a citizen, you benefit from many things of your home country regardless of whether or not you reside there. Such as, for example, your home country's ability to exert pressure on the government of where you reside when you're unjustly arrested/detained. There's also access to the consulate of your home country and all services you have access to from the resident country. All of that stuff is funded somehow and it can seem unfair that only those who live within the home country's borders fund those things while those who reside elsewhere get to take advantage of it all without paying anything into it.

For Americans, for better or worse, its very large stick (the military) affords its citizens all sorts of benefits while traveling/living abroad.

There’s also the behaviour it incentivises - if you’ve moved abroad and intend to stay there long term, secure citizenship there and renounce your American citizenship to avoid double taxation.

The USA isn’t exactly hurting for new citizens and it’s probably desirable to have expats incentivised to deliberately relinquish their passports.

Mind you I’m looking at this from the perspective of here in New Zealand, where there’s regular media stories about Australia deporting NZ citizens who moved over there as kids and ended up criminals. There’s no incentives to relinquish an NZ passport so Australia can revoke their citizenship, deport, and they become NZs problem.

if you’ve moved abroad and intend to stay there long term, secure citizenship there and renounce your American citizenship to avoid double taxation

That should be "intend to stay there forever", since renouncing your USA citizenship is typically permanent, once you renounce citizenship, it's difficult or impossible to regain it.

> For Americans, for better or worse, its very large stick (the military) affords its citizens all sorts of benefits while traveling/living abroad

This is mostly a myth.

There are lots of examples of cases where people from less RAWR MILITARY countries (like... Sweden) got pulled out of risky situations before the Americans did. In some cases Americans simply have not gotten rescued at all and left to fend for themselves! And the US doesn't perform that service for free... if you get rescued they charge you tens of thousands.

Being able to be negotiated out of detainment has more to do with politics and trade, and the US has a lot of political enemies. The countries where the US military is a factor are countries you're not likely to want to move to and make a living in anyway.

Being able to travel to countries is also weaker as a US citizen, since many countries apply reciprocity, and the US often has stricter immigration controls.

Being American living abroad is mostly a demerit. You can't open bank accounts due to FATCA, you have to pay expensive specialized accountants due to foreign taxation, and in many cases people just don't like you due to your government. I can't think of any situations where being American is a pro over being an EU citizen.

> very large stick (the military) affords its citizens all sorts of benefits

That large stick to me seems to rather hit Americans traveling abroad, in that the US military unfortunately a bit has given ( people from the US ) a bad rep at some places?

when instead I, from western/northern Europe, is welcomed wherever I go (it seems this far)

> it looks like there are provisions to give you exclusions on your foreign income,if you have any

The foreign income exclusion is not that high, especially if you are a mid career tech worker ($107,600 for 2020), and you will be double taxed on amounts above the exclusion. But at least you can skip California state taxes if you count as a nonresident.

I guess that's the decision to make. Do you pay extra to keep your U.S. citizenship active, or do you renounce citizenship to pay less?

I'm sure different people will have different ideas of what that's worth, but it's available as a choice. People that opt not to renounce citizenship have obviously decided it's worth it to not do so, whether that be keeping future options open, or because they know they plan to return. $100k is a lot of money, even if in many locations its less than a mid-career tech worker salary, so I'm not sure I have any objections to this.

There is a sense of dissatisfaction when one has to pay the extra tax, while one's coworkers, who are from countries other than the US, do not.

California taxes worldwide income, and you are still considered a CA resident if you were living there before you left the country.

I'm not a tax professional, but below is the relevant section from the California Franchise Tax Board's Guideline for Determining Resident Status, which can grant nonresident status depending on the particulars of one's employment:

Safe Harbor

Safe harbor is available for certain individuals leaving California under employment-related contracts. The safe harbor provides that an individual domiciled in California who is outside California under an employment-related contract for an uninterrupted period of at least 546 consecutive days will be considered a nonresident unless any of the following is met:

• The individual has intangible income exceeding $200,000 in any taxable year during which the employment-related contract is in effect.

• The principal purpose of the absence from California is to avoid personal income tax.

The spouse/RDP of the individual covered by this safe harbor rule will also be considered a nonresident while accompanying the individual outside California for at least 546 consecutive days. Return visits to California that do not exceed a total of 45 days during any taxable year covered by the employment contract are considered temporary.

Is that the salary for a mid-career tech worker in the US, or in Europe/Asia? Because tech salaries are a lot lower outside of the US.

Also many countries have double-taxation treaties to avoid the double taxation when you exceed $100k

I know a bunch of Americans abroad, none of them have to pay any tax to the US, but several of them have to pay specialist accountants to deal with the differences in taxation between the countries. It ends up being a tax on Americans that is not paid to the US but to accountants.

> Is that the salary for a mid-career tech worker in the US, or in Europe/Asia? Because tech salaries are a lot lower outside of the US.

Definitely it depends on the country, the industry, the specific company, and by the definition of mid-career (10 years? 20 years?).

> Also many countries have double-taxation treaties to avoid the double taxation when you exceed $100k

But then again, other countries do not double-tax from the start, so none of the international coworkers of the Americans abroad have to pay any taxes to their home countries, or for specialist accountants to deal with the differences in taxation.

I totally agree it's a ridiculous burden.

Americans have a big burden of FATCA, specialist accountants and just a lot of stress in general.

And to what end, when most of them end up paying no taxes to the US whatsoever? (this was the point I was trying to make - that after all this BS they are put through, the US is still not getting any extra tax revenue from these people)

It seems like it's mostly so that US politicians can say they've done something about high-profile rich people who have moved to tax havens, rather than actually increase tax income measurably.

You don’t have to use the exclusion, and in a lot of cases it’s not really beneficial.

The other option is to pay the difference in taxes, so if you were taxed at 50% in the country of residence, and the tax bill in the US would have been 45%, you’ll get the 5% back as tax credits towards future US tax obligations.

If you’re working in most European nations you’ll probably be paying more in tax than you would in the US.

Expat here, that's not how it works. You have two options when you live/work in another country:

Exclude up to about $100k of your foreign income from US taxes -- after that you still pay US taxes, and at the rate you would have paid if you were paying from the first dollar, meaning if you make $130K, you don't pay US taxes as if you made $30K, you pay the difference between the taxes on $130K and the taxes on $100K.

Deduct whatever you pay in foreign taxes from your US taxes, dollar for dollar.

The US is almost the only country that does this. All of my co-workers from Israel, Ukraine, India, and many other places pay generally no taxes in their home countries.

In the case of Americans outside the US... You can write off foreign taxes paid up to a limit on the American side.

Yes, but not the income so taxed, beyond the foreign earned income exclusion, which is relatively low.

> it goes against the whole concept of freedom of movement

Freedom of movement is free as in libre, not free as in gratis. “You owe taxes if you leave” isn't a violation of freedom of movement.

>Some people also take the really risky step of throwing out their US citizenship

It is actually quite a lengthy application process to try and renounce your US Citizenship, and the federal government can simply deny your application.

Have you ever worked for a Delaware corporation in a state other than Delaware?

If you've ever driven to a different county to get cheaper gas, or chose a house in a certain municipality to get a lower property tax, or purchased nearby for a lower sales tax, or didn't compute it yourself to send to your state after an online purchase, it's the exact same thing.

This has been reinforced by the Supreme Court who could find no distinction between any socioeconomic class optimizing their tax burden, no matter how accessible the privilege becomes for some.

> Perhaps it's naive of me,

I think it would be considered naive to elevate the greed of the state over the greed of an individual. Your current train of thought doesn't seem to factor it in at all, it seems more like "if this kind of authority asks, because I respect it, I must comply" which makes me wonder where the limits are. Any state? Any due process outcome? Any percentage? Would you consider to read the state's law to discover that you are not subjected to the payment in many circumstances that you can create? To me, thats where the naivete lies.

My current thoughts on taxes are that the state incentivizes certain kinds of transactions. And if you don't engage in those kind of transactions then the state taxes a percentage of the remainder. The percentage of the tax being a deterrent, as it would prefer you put your money to use in other ways so that you never pay it. Spending, investments, etc. Which this logic its not about imagining that you are passively paying for roads and schools (you aren't, you are paying interest on the funds the state borrowed from the international markets to pay for the roads and schools that were already going to be paid for regardless, the ones that would be neglected would still be neglected). This is most directly seen with the old healthcare fine: if you don't have healthcare through an employer and don't pay for the affordable care act plan then you pay a $1,000 tax. They are incentivizing you to shift capital to certain areas of the economy, with the fallback being the state. This will be a more productive way for you to think of all transactions with the state.

> Any state? Any due process outcome? Any percentage?

My original comment does not state my opinions on these parameters of the taxation process. I was commenting on how I felt the act of moving to a new state, just to get out of paying taxes in the state you currently live in (and earned that money in), is, in general, immoral. I could have spent several paragraphs going over every possible exception to this viewpoint, and hedge every assertion with "in general", "except when", etc., but that tends to be tedious to both read and write.

> Would you consider to read the state's law to discover that you are not subjected to the payment in many circumstances that you can create?

> Which this logic its not about imagining that you are passively paying for roads and schools

Could you restate these sentences? I can't quite understand them.

I understand, and I didn't mean to come across like I wanted you to write a dissertation on the topic.

I do find all of these issues related though, and that your comment is only naive because it isn't nuanced enough. Naive wouldn't have been the word I would have led with, as it is your word for yourself willing to be open to another perspective.

I don't find that action immoral because I don't find the state's goal grounded in morality. I find both agents to be amoral, with the individual's amorality being both compliant and reactionary to the state's amoral aggregate legislative process where the legislatures are inattentive and misguided and misled.

I agree that a state (or country, etc.) will nearly always have a certain amount of amorality (or immorality, for that matter). However most legislatures have at least some morality as well. Taxes aren't always used to incentivize/disincentivize, sometimes they are gathered for public works or services, such as roadways, healthcare*, and unemployement benefits. I know that an individual may not always view those things as something the government should be taking a hand in, but I would like to think that, even if someone doesn't agree with the action, they can at least agree with the intention.

*the current state of the US healthcare system notwithstanding.

> I would like to think that, even if someone doesn't agree with the action, they can at least agree with the intention.

right, and I find that unrelated to being obligated to pay it.

its more like

"way to go, guys!" buys gas across the county line

"that's a great cause!" buys property in another state

"yes, build that park Leslie Knope!" moves

if I didn't do any of those things then I would pay it. if I wanted 1% - 50% more money to do a different thing and there was a legally compliant way to do so (enabled by the same authorities, mind you), I would consider it

It really depends on your priors. If you think California is lighting the money on fire or taxes are theft, it is pretty easy to justify.

I would allow them to move to avoid paying less, but put a 15 year time limit on moving back.

If you move back before, you pay the original tax?

The same for corporations who move to the lowest taxed country.

Apple wants to pay Irish tax rates, then pack up CEO, CFO, and all employees in management positions and move to Ireland and Zoom. Your troops can stay here.

(Your first few big pay days should be exempt from all taxes though, especially if you can prove your were poor, or middle class in the previous 10 years? I’ve never felt it was fair for a guy whom got lucky in business, or life, having to pay a big tax; especially if they were scraping by in previous years. Am I saying the poor unemployed guy who one the lottery shouldn’t have to pay any tax on that first lottery win in life, or business—-yes. Our social safety net is so terrible here, it can’t be an excuse to tax new found wealth. America does not help out it’s poor well enough to tax those first few big pay days.)

This is where payment plans come in. Instead of lump sum taxed as such. Have a portion per year taxed at the lower threshold.

But how you arrange doing that within your business framework is hard.

I agree that tax system should take individual person constancy of income into account.

I don't see any moral qualms with opting to pay the least amount of taxes you legally can for the same reason I don't see any moral victory in choosing to pay more than you're obligated.

When my accountant tells me to sign here and here to save myself a few thousands a year, I don't ask him "wouldn't these few thousand dollars benefit the general public?" I keep what I earned because I know that if the table's were turned, the state would never choose to give me more than I'm owed either.

If it is royalties coming in, things have to get complicated. They could have seen that it was going to be good, and then moved.

In which case... I am genuinely curious what the legal rules are.

so you're saying it he needed a little sweetness in his life? (ducks)

I thought songwriters had some sort of union or industry group that went to bat for them? The article and this discussion makes it sound that doesn't exist.

edit: hmm, ASCAP and Songwriters guild are a couple names that come up... though this might be something of a dispute within different groups within ASCAP..

There is nothing to bat for i.e. no royalties until the song has been sold.

No song can be sold in significant number until it has been recorded by a famous artist backed by a well resourced record company.

By the time a song has been sold in significant numbers, it is too late for ASCAP or the Songwriters Guild to act, because the song has already been credited to an artist who didn't actually write it, because the songwriter signed away his or her rights in order to bootstrap the song.

You may think "that's not fair", and you may be right, but the difficulty is that a famous artist can make as much money selling a song that is not quite as good as a "great" song, and the supply of OK songs far exceeds the supply of "great" songs.

What even is a "great" song? It is difficult to tell, and even more difficult to prove, until it has been recorded by a "great" artist, and bought by millions of fans of said artist.

By that point, a contract exists crediting the "great" artist with writing or co-writing the song. This contract can be defended in a court of law by an ordinary lawyer working for a "great" record company, or better still, by a "great" lawyer working for a "great" record company.

When it comes to greatness, the medium is the message.

Issues of fairness and pay are the very reasons unions are formed. Setting fair boundaries on jobs is within the scope of many unions touching the entertainment industry.

I have a few friends in the business and they are basically all broke except for one. Music is like the game industry. Hits based and there are far more talented people pursuing it than there are hits. Being talented isn’t enough, you need to be well connected, good looking, lucky, etc. The internet has made it better than ever to carve out a niche and get a few thousand fans, but it’s still hard to get people to choose you over the millions of other things screaming for attention.

The music industry is much worse in my opinion. If you spend half your life learning to program so you can make games, you can always give up at 38 and start working on boring enterprise software.

If You're a 38-year-old self-taught musician you can't exactly walk into a company and get a job.

I still make music as one of my main hobbies, but I've accepted that no one will ever know who I am, and I'll never make a single cent. There's nothing in the world like making a song for your friends though.

That is precisely the story of a close friend. It really messed her up for several years. She was genuinely amazingly talented but her band never managed to be in the right place at the right time.

She did land on her feet, after literally going all the way back to college as a freshman. (She was fortunate to have the resources for that.)

Best anecdote though, on the 18 year olds who she befriended in the program: "The good news is they think I'm 28. The bad news is they think that's old."

There's plenty of "working musicians" not in the industry: playing gigs in jazz clubs, at weddings. If you're a composer or a songwriter, you can find work in films and TV and commercials (lots of ad agency work to go around), or become an in-house composer at a stock music house, or another production staff, like a game studio!

If you try to find stardom, you won't succeed.

I like this answer. There’s more musicians who aren’t well known, but doesn’t mean they’re out of work.

I have much respect for session musicians... probably the most talented type of musician

This sounds very much like my impression of the music industry but not my experience of the game industry.

Yes, starting your own indie studio means you'll probably not make it. But a lot of developers have steady jobs with decent pay at bigger studios.

I'm making decent money as a game developer. You just have to hone your craft and find something niche and interesting that few people can do well.

I also compose and produce music and have not made a cent from it other than occasional recording time.

Game dev is way easier.

> I get to hear about how he's working with his mentor to do vocal production on a track getting pitched for Maroon 5, The Chainsmokers, etc. Sometimes the tracks take -- the artist likes them and decides to move forward. Usually they don't and it's a lot of getting your hopes up for nothing

This lines up with stories I’ve heard from a friend who had some success in the music industry (2 gold records), was signed to a major label, then dropped so went into song writing.

It’s a hyper competitive industry to operate in

> My friend's mentor is late 30s and mainly does songwriting. ... He went from "how do I pay rent" to 7M literally over night.

> The people who make the most look good, sound good, and hell they're crazy talented. But they aren't the people who've written the lyrics or the melodies that define our culture.

I am confused by the story: isn't the person who made the big bucks here a person who "mainly does songwriting"?

> I am confused by the story: isn't the person who made the big bucks here a person who "mainly does songwriting"?

The law says the songwriter is entitled to songwriting royalties.

In practice, famous artists' managers negotiate with poor unknown songwriters to take a percentage of the songwriters royalty by pretending that the artist co-wrote or wholly wrote the song.

This is made possible by supply and demand, and asymmetrical market access.

Famous artists can sell millions of recordings, even if the songs aren't so great. They have long queues of songwriters trying to offer them material for that reason.

Great unknown songwriters can't sell great songs unless they are recorded by someone famous or connected, because nobody will hear them.

To resolve these dynamics and make deals, mangers since ancient times have made talented unknown songwriters offers they can't refuse: Give away a percentage of the songwriting royalty (by crediting an artist for co-writing or writing the melody or the lyric) in exchange for jumping ahead of other talented unknown songwriters in the queue to get to market.

> famous artists' managers negotiate with poor unknown songwriters to take a percentage of the songwriters royalty by pretending that the artist co-wrote or wholly wrote the song.

That might not be strictly necessary, because in the U.S., there's such a thing as a performer's copyright in the (recorded) performance itself, separate from the songwriter's copyright in the song. [0]

[0] https://www.ip-watch.org/2014/11/24/us-courts-recognise-new-...

That's a different issue occurring downstream from the contractual arrangement for the songwriting credits.

In what way are they "crazy talented" if they dont author the lyrics or the music? Is it meant cynically to describe the situation where the performer is just packaging for someone else's talant?

They kind of say: "look good, sound good."

Having worked in this industry myself, is it definitely a talent to have good stage presence, good presence in front of a videocamera, photogenic and modeling skills. Not to mention charisma when dealing with radio and TV interviews, fanbase, etc.

It's also a talent to sing well, to sing consistently, to be able to channel inflection and emotion on command in a studio or on a stage.

There is more to being a pop star than the songwriting.

(Note I'm saying all this while still holding huge respect and value for the songwriters and producers themselves. I'm a total music fan.)

But that was always the case. I have the (perhaps incorrect) impression that over time, pop performers perform someone else's materials more and more.

It wasn't really always the case. If you scroll back, so to speak, a generation or so, the further and further you get, the less necessary it was to win the trifecta of being Attractive, A Dancer, and a Live Performer. Let alone songwriter. There's only so many people that are all 4 and you know all of them by name.

You could be VERY plain looking, and unable to dance at all, and chart in in 1965.

Fred Astaire's original audition allegedly was noted as: "can act, can sing, can dance a little."

Attraction followed from fame, rather than the other way around.

I would argue that it has waxed and waned. 50s most music was written by a composer. Have a songwriter behind a big name like Frank Sinatra. 60s has a surge of bands producing their own music in a smallish crew (Beatles, Beach Boys). But then arena rock was tightly controlled by the industry, but then Nirvana and grunge got big.

That's a really interesting point. Do you think that pattern applies to other genres too?

Yep. And to go to the extreme like Milli Vanilli, when they’re performing they’re not even the one’s actually singing!

Being able to dance, sing, and play an instrument at the level expected by 10s of thousands of people, each paying hundreds of dollars per ticket is pretty damn talented. To be able to keep up that level of performance, basically every day, for almost a year, while sleeping in a bus and eating on road is crazy levels of talent.

Maybe singing, dancing, playing instruments, overall performing, or even producing?

I think it was meant in the way that performers need to be talented in singing, performance, charisma and dancing. Stuff like that. Singing well isn't easy, doing all of these things is way harder still.

Disclaimer: I have perfect pitch since I was a kid, can hold a note when singing, made a lot of music as a kid (guitar and electronic), had some singing lessons and yet I'm at best a fun karaoke singer to listen to when you're drunk.

> Is it meant cynically to describe the situation where the performer is just packaging for someone else's talant?

Without comment on the state of pop music, you don't actually mean to suggest that performance isn't a talent of it's own? How are you going to and sell that idea to Yo-Yo Ma?

> He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax

WA is closing that loophole. They just passed a gigantic capital gains tax.

Where are the capital gains here?

> A single track will have 50 names on it between writing, production, studio performance, etc.

This is something I've noticed more and more lately. The list of credits on everything is huge. I happened to see an episode of Family Guy the other day. I haven't regularly watched it for years, but noticed on this one there were literally minutes of credits at the beginning. It went on and on and on. I don't know why this is or what it means, but it's interesting.

> I'm consistently shocked when talking with my friend just how little music matters in the music industry. The people who make the most look good, sound good, and hell they're crazy talented. But they aren't the people who've written the lyrics or the melodies that define our culture. We probably can't name those people.

I don't think this is a new phenomenon by any means. I was reading the other day about The Beatles and how, when they became big in the USA, the professional songwriters of the time were worried because these guys wrote their own songs. Apparently it was almost unheard of at the time.

Find some episodes of The Muppet Show. Late 1970s, with a entertainment-related guest on each episode.

Sometimes the guest is an actor or actress, and they're very nice looking.

Sometimes the guest is a musician... and they look funny to modern eyes. Then they pull out their instrument or open their mouth, and you can hear the same (or better) quality as today's musicians.

The Muppet Show ended in 1981. MTV launched in 1981.

@DSR_ I used to be in the music world last century. Even then there was show business (visual appeal, dancing etc) and there was musicians (people who can play and/or sing really well).

This is very accentuated today, with a tremendous amount of effort put in by artists to be visually appealing/charismatic on instagram etc, which has replaced the top 20 chart position marketing trick.

There is little to no time to create music, the emphasis is very much on sound bites and visual marketing...

> We probably can't name those people

Excepting songwriters who are/were also recording artists (The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Danny Elfman, Elton John, Randy Newman, Sia....)

How about Max Martin? Stock Aitken Waterman? Lieber and Stoller?

There are of course many well-known song composers and lyricists in contemporary musical film and theater, for example Alan Menken, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Stephen Sondheim...

I took a job recently client basically twisted my arm I didn't need to work. One of the guys on the job is a live country musician, a big one. They're not on tour right now and he doesn't just sit around he works so he's out laying tile doing whatever carpentry work he can during the covid lockdown with no live shows. He hates country absolutely can't stand it, but fell into the country crowd early in his career and now that's all he plays. So this guy's up there playing big huge amazing country shows hates every minute of it.

It seems as though this is not a well understood issue from reading the comments here. This isn’t artists doing interviews and saying “I wrote this”. The problem is that the artists are bullying their way into getting points for the song writing credits (publishing royalties) when they had little(change a word in the lyrics) or no input into the song.

I fully support artists getting as much of the live performance/merch/appearances money as they can. If they did not write a song they should not be getting paid for songwriting. All of the justifications in the article dating back to Elvis Presley show how long the business has been slimy.

This parallels my entire experience with comp-sci and "group" projects.

This is a large reason behind why I switched to programming after receiving a bachelors in media arts. I’ve had bad experiences with people claiming work they didn’t do, and getting away with it because they knew people.

...and programming pays better, anyhow.

My favorite was in grad school -- six weeks into a final project, the professor emailed us "we noticed one of your assigned group member's name was missing from the project mid-term report". We were all like huh? What 5th group member? This person was assigned to our random group at week 0 and had never bother to even introduce himself in five weeks! Free rider galore.

Well now I'm curious. How was the situation resolved?

It was a 13 week class and the person minimally contributed by just showing up to meetings such that you couldn't say "he didn't show up." We had to do some D3js visualizations and one time he even sent a photo shreenshot of a chart rather than actual code to embed onto our project site.

One time he gave us a hard time about not being able to meet at any point except his lunch-hour. So we're all on Eastern Time at 3pm during the workday and he's on zoom...eating a sandwich as we spoke. So we gave up, we didnt even include him on any conversations because it was negative value.

In speaking with other students, 5-10% of the graduating class were complete free riders. Some were sponsored (e.g., federal government employees, etc) and were not only free-riders in terms of work, but also in terms of cost. Further, when graded your team got graded based on how many people you had, which many of us spoke up against especially given randomly assigned groups.

That said, some of my randomly assigned teammates were awesome, we're still friends, we formed great bonds and I wouldnt want to miss that experience.

All in all it sounds like the class adequately prepared you for the real world.

One of the most fair way to handle group projects grading was in my capstone business management course. At the end, the 6 of us each had to (privately) rank everyone else according to their contribution, and the assessment by your peers was 20% of the grade for the project.

Because someone had to come in last place, it eased a lot of the tension and created a much more pleasant group dynamic:

- The free-rider(s) were perfectly okay with jumping on the grenade, filling the last-place spot, and knocking 20% off their final grade in exchange for doing very little work and still passing the class.

- The lazier people who did care about their grade were a bit more motivated to contribute than they otherwise would've been.

- The go-getters who wanted to ace the class felt like they were fairly compensated for doing most of the heavy lifting.

I wonder how a group of pure go-getters would fare on a grade structure like this.

We had a fairly similar grading program in my IT capstone project. The professor made it clear that if a group had either a total grifter or was an all-star team exceptions could be made. We had to give lots of presentations and question and answer sessions. It was generally pretty clear to the entire class which students were slackers and couldn't answer questions and which ones knew their stuff.

>> If they did not write a song they should not be getting paid for songwriting.

What does "write the song" mean though? You hear lots of remix and cover versions of famous songs which are obviously derivative works, but what if that happens before the song is ever published? What if a song writer creates a song specifically for an artist? Do these stylistic influences count for writing credit? The line is not well defined.

I think the line is pretty well defined. If a songwriter writes a song specifically for an artist, that doesn't indicate any less skill and definitely doesn't mean the artist added anything meaningful. That song could have just as easily (as in the Elvis example) been recorded by another artist. That's akin to saying that I took inspiration from the Harry Potter books, so I should give JK Rowling a cut of my book deal.

As for remixes and covers, I'd say that if there was a change made that significantly altered or changed the song, it would be considered involvement. It seems that from the article, remixing or changing the song to the point where you would consider it substantially different is enough for a share of publishing revenues.

Bottom line is that while it's still subjective, most musicians and songwriters would have no trouble recognizing if someone else had a substantial impact on the final product.

It’d be like movie producers taking a cut from film scores or songs because they influenced the score or music.

Or like Gene Roddenberry writing some cheap lyrics to the Star Trek theme so he'd get a 50% split of the publishing with composer Alexander Courage.

The lyrics were never used. Because the lyrics were never supposed to be used.

In fact a number of hits were originally composed with a different artist in mind who declined.

>>That's akin to saying that I took inspiration from the Harry Potter books, so I should give JK Rowling a cut of my book deal.

Yup, just to be clear in that case, if you are writing about the characters JKR created, with their attributes, personas, and/or backstories, you are fully expected to license the characters and pay royalties to JKR. You are specifically utilizing her copyrighted works for profit, even if you don't use a single line of pre-existing dialogue.

This is why we don't have a million non-Disney Mickey Mouse stories, media, videos, etc. - Disney owns the copyright on not only the specific prior works but also the characters.

No question, influence and creative origin count, and should be compensated.

Mickey mouse went to the store. On the way there he slipped on a banana peel and fell.

No royalty paid.

Start making money off of that and Disney will come knocking.

Wow, what an unexpectedly inane and ignorant comment on HN.

That is like saying: "I just drove by a cop at 3mph over the speed limit and he didn't even turn on his lights. No fine paid." (implying that therefore speed limit laws don't exist)

The fact that many trivial violations go un-prosecuted never invalidates the law.

Here's a key line just a few paragraphs into a Georgetown Law paper on the topic [1] >>Many entertainment corporation shave left fan fiction alone, but a few have attempted and are attempting to stamp out unauthorized use of their proprietary characters.

It is very common. Your trivial "example" may come under fair use, but that says nothing about the actual facts of the matter.

[1] https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

I think there are clear cases where someone did or didn’t write a song, but there are also very blurry areas in the middle (and these areas are where the debate actually matters). My impression is that it’s not uncommon for people at many stages in the audio engineering and music production to change things that may or may not be considered part of “writing the song.”

It's about paying people for the work they do.

This page has a reasonably accessible description of who does what and why they get paid: https://www.openmicuk.co.uk/advice/music-royalties-explained...

Indeed, and it goes back before Elvis. Screwing popular songwriters of their royalties has been a fixture of the music business since time immoral. From what I've read, Jelly Roll Morton's publisher added his own lyrics to Morton's instrumental tunes, to get a cut of the royalties. And it goes back before the recording industry. Before the phonograph, the "music business" was sheet music, there were "stars," and sheet music composers experienced all of the shenanigans that we associate with the music business today.

> since time immoral

I like this typo.

Me too - but what would it mean? A long time or a short time?

Time immemorial: "extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition, indefinitely ancient, ancient beyond memory or record."

Immoral: "an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong."

I assume it means a time length for as long as the times have been immoral.... So perhaps it means since the dawn of mankind?

"You can leave your hat on"

"You don't have to put out the red light"

Freudian slip maybe.

Gene Roddenberry added lyrics to the theme song of the original Star Trek series – which were never actually sung in the opening credits – just so he could get part of the royalties.

The entire system seems incredibly open to bad faith abuse.

An interesting correlation is that songwriters used to be popularly-famous. Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin stick out.

But I can't confidently name a single songwriter from the last 50 years, aside from the ones that were predominantly popular performers and recorded-music artists (Roger Waters, Lennon/McCartney, James Taylor).

To me, not knowing any better, this suggests that songwriters had more economic self-determination within the music industry, which translates into influence and cachet, in the 1920s than they do in the 2020s.

Today, again as an outsider, it seems like publishers and managers have an outsized influence, because they control the economics more than any other entity in the system.

It depends how well-known you have to be to be well known, but for some level of well-known, off the top of my head:

Leiber and Stoller, Ashford and Simpson, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Rod Temperton, Diane Warren, Desmond Child, and Max Martin are well known songwriters from more modern times.

However, their hits are much better known than they are, compared to the great American songbook guys. Although there are other very successful songwriters from that era with less name recongnition, for example, Johnny Mercer or Harry Warren.

At least in hip hop, if you have a falling out with your ghost writers they'll make an effort to expose you.

For example Quentin Miller here wrote tons of songs for Drake. https://genius.com/artists/Quentin-miller

Ghost producing is also a thing, I've heard stories of a producer getting $700 or $600 for fairly popular track because the the actual song is credited to someone else.

Hell, in hip hop it's not unheard of for bigger artist to outright steal ideas and concepts from underground artists. Then you can remake the song as your own, and if you decide to reach back and compensate the original artist that's okay but as far as I can tell you'll very rarely get into legal trouble.

Case in point

https://www.bet.com/music/2018/06/26/childish-gambino-this-i...

It's so easy to become successful if you just steal ideas from people

It's not like 10% of sales goes to the song writer, so the artist changing a word means that the artist gets and additional 1% and the song writer only 9%. Surely at the point of producing a contract everyone negotiates the split and signs the contract if they are happy with the deal.

Few people are ever happy with a contract. That's why it's a contract in the first place. If everyone were happy, there'd be no need to make breaking the terms of one actionable.

Think of it as separate pies. Album sales will be split into at least 3 pieces. Album sales are the first pie. Firstly the label will have to recoup cost of production, sample clearance, video production etc to recoup. The producers and songwriters will likely get paid here as well, but the artist will get paid only after it recoups. Fuzzy math comes into play here and 10 million selling albums may never recoup...

Next there is the mechanical royalties that come from radio play, streaming, licensing agreements, etc. Those largely go to the owner of the composition(e.g. songwriter) from 25% up to 90ish percent depending on the publishing deal.

The live performance aspect is where the artist can rake it in if they play things smart. The live show largely goes to the artist(*as long as there is not a 360 deal in place*) They can charge what they can get, and sell merch at the show. If they produce their own merch they can probably net a nice profit. If they let a merch company "handle it for them" they will see 10 cents on the dollar or less. Artists can get into trouble if they make their shows too big and would only break even/run at a loss.

360 deals are a particularly insidious anti artist beast. Basically the label throws their might behind the artist and gets a large cut of ALL aspects of the money they make being an artist.(live shows,merch, everything) I suspect many of the big names at least start out in a 360 deal these days, and may have negotiating power once they become Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga or Ariana Grande.

Songwriters probably have the least negotiating power in this situation. When an artist has 50 songwriting teams throwing tracks their way, a suboptimal deal may have to be accepted just to have a shot at making the album. While I am not saying songwriting is not a talent(it most certainly is), unfortunately more people have said talent than there are A-List stars.

Sorry, but this is wrong. First of all the rates for publishing royalties are standardized and typically wouldn't be renegotiated on a song-by-song or project-by-project basis. So it is very similar to '10% of sales goes to the song writer'.

Equally important is the fact that a share of publishing means a share of all sorts of royalties which aren't negotiated case by case. For example for playing the song on the radio, in restaurants, on TV shows, etc. But even more insidiously, it applies to cover versions. So if Elvis Presley gets a 50% songwriting credit, he will then take 50% of the portion due to the songwriter on any version recorded or played live by anyone (who hasn't added the 'Presley magic'), at any time in the future.

However I think being able to say "I (co-)wrote this" also plays a part - especially in Elvis' time, actual singer-songwriters were probably held in greater esteem than artists that were just "parroting" songs others wrote for them, so giving the impression that they were involved in writing the songs may have been important from that perspective too...

I always thought the artists make token edits to the songs so they can keep up the charade of writing their own songs for marketing reasons.

Someone told me "Taylor Swift writes her own songs." Sure, but when you look at the songwriters on 1989, over half of them were at least co-written by the song writer with the most #1 hits after McCartney and Lennon.

I looked this up and while some of her older hits were just credited to her, a really impressive number of them were co-written by Liz Rose, who I’ve never even heard of.

Could it be a pseudonym for someone whose image would suffer if they were seen to be writing Taylor Swift songs?

No... just Google "Liz Rose"

No, she’s a very successful country songwriter. Can’t see why she wouldn’t want the association.

What if it’s someone like Eminem?

Well you can search for her on Google and find her photo and tons of personal details. So I consider that unlikely.

> I looked this up and while some of her older hits were just credited to her

Haha. "Some". I think if we dove deeper we'll find that number shockingly close to zero.

Two of six tracks on her first album. Didn’t check the others.

She wrote her whole third album alone.

Looking at Folklore on wikipedia Antonof or Dessner are on most of the tracks. Do I think she took a couple of Indie music people to help her write/produce etc songs in a new style? Clearly. Does that actually mean she just added a word here and there though?

Trying to infer whether on not Taylor Swift writes her own songs based on consistent collaborators seems odd to me.

Swift writes her own music. She works with collaborators and producers but she writes her own music. Dessner sent her instrumental tracks that she turned into folklore (writing to track), it was similar with Antonof. This isn’t a marketing charade, she’s literally a songwriter first.

She has included song-writing voice memos that show the progression of how she wrote certain songs on 1989 and the documentary “Miss Americana” clearly shows her songwriting process (as does this collection of clips from an AT&T promo she did for Reputation https://youtu.be/I4WlSnWtkt8).

Liz Rose, who co-wrote some of Swift's earlier songs (including the much-loved, “All Too Well”), described the process of working with her as editing [1], something all of her other collaborators have said too.

There are a lot of pop stars who get a writing credit for doing very little on a track but Taylor Swift isn’t one of them. If anything, she’s been quite clear that her success is directly tied to her songwriting. Her voice alone (especially as a teenager) wouldn’t have made her a star. It was her songs, paired with her voice and her personality that made everything work.

[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bp/swift-collaboration--...

There are a lot of rock singers whose talent isn't actually singing. Neil Young, for example. His songwriting and arrangements are so good one doesn't notice he doesn't have a good voice for singing.

> he doesn't have a good voice for singing.

Not everyone agrees with that estimation

Vocal Coach reacts to Neil Young - Old Man (Live)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppSF6JpdaKQ

Neil Young "Old Man" REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trE7YifD9Jc

I'm not so sure that isn't just confirmation bias.

Compare his voice to that of, say, A-ha's lead singer. Now that guy has a voice. The same with the lead singer of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

One reason Neil Young appeals to me is because he has an unremarkable voice yet succeeded anyway. Yah gotta respect that.

I remember when Stevie Nicks burst on the scene. All the reviews were she had a lousy, raspy voice that nobody would like. But she soon won everyone over :-)

Young's voice suffers terribly from age, so I think both views are correct depending on which recording you're looking at. Pretty sure that live recording of Old Man is from his 1971 Live at Massey Hall recording, which is him near his peak.

> Young's voice suffers terribly from age

Not everyone would agree with that estimation.

May 19, 2019 CONCERT REVIEW: Neil Young's entrancing night at The Fox

https://www.inlander.com/spokane/concert-review-neil-youngs-...

I've seen several stars who started their career in the late sixties, and I'd say everyone of their voices "sounded great" while also being considerably worse than their debut period. I don't think even Neil Young would disagree here, I'm pretty sure he has openly discussed some of the vocal issues he had.

That song is a masterpiece, and he sings it well. But that doesn't mean the tone of his voice is great. It's just such a great song that we transfer that to his tone. A singer is stuck with his tone, no amount of training and technique will change it.

Of course, it's my favorite NY song, too.

If Rihanna sings your song it might have a much greater chance of being a hit.10% of a million dollars is better than 100% of 10000 dollars. You just have to do the math and figure if its worth it or not.

Yes, this is well covered in the article.

This unfortunately has been a long used tactic in the music world. In the old times it was sharpie producers putting their names as writers for songs of poor black artists, so they (the producers) can get royalties in addition to their usual fees. Now it is the singers taking advantage of the songwriters and composers.

It is all evil but it kind of shows who has the negotiation leverage. Todays pop music scene is all about creating a celebrity image consumers want to identify with. Once said image is created the actual music is not that important. So the writers do not get much credit.

As a huge fan of blackpink I highly recommend you check out the documentary they have on Netflix. It became obvious after watching it that the genius behind blackpink is Teddy Park, who was also behind another massively successful girl group 2NE1.

I've thought about it slightly and without Teddy Park there is no blackpink, but without the individual members each bringing their own flavour to the group, there is no blackpink either.

If you're familiar with the concept art industry, this is essentially just character design but with living people.

We are being fed a story, Katy Perry and Ariana Grande are good examples of this.

With these types of "manufactured" performance groups I don't think there's any question that they are not composers. The Lady Gaga case (she promotes herself as a composer / guitarist / pianist) is much more of an intentional mislead, in my opinion.

I have no dog in this fight and am not even really a fan but always thought Gaga was a legit artist. Do have any proof she's not?

Performers who don't write or produce their own material are still artists and are as legitimate as any others!

I'd say they are performers not artists. The girl running Photoshop is an artist, the HP LaserJet that prints it out isn't. We don't consider choir members to be artists, but if it's just one voice we assume they are?

Now you're just getting into a war about what art is.

The performance is the art. In your analogy printer = PA system.

Who doesn't consider choir members to be artists?

Members of the choir are performing artists. They make artistic choices related to the actual performance of the song, like how to sing the words written on the page.

Members of the choir do not make those choices. The conductor does. The singers are the instrument in that case. Like a pipe in an organ. Their job is to blend and produce the sounds according to the interpretation of the conductor. Source: am a choir member. You will be fired if you interpret the music against the conductor's desires.

If Jascha Heifetz and Murray Perahia aren’t artists then your definition is theatrically absurd.

These days a lot of them can't actually sing without autotune to clean up their caterwauling.

Still artists.

Yes, I'm not complaining that Tina Turner or Diana Ross didn't write the songs they sang (with the odd exception).

Lady Gaga has chops and is a real artist. This is a video of her performing an original composition in college:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM51qOpwcIM

No argument there. Does she credit her songwriters? Is it well known that she doesn't write 100%? Or does that not matter to anyone because she's so awesome?

> "I have worked with and written with some UNREAL artists who let me into their lives to create with them who deserved their credit and publishing, ..."

I think most people think she falls under this category.

I know that the average clubgoerand radio listener assumes songs are produced entirely by the headline artist. From my life experience advocating for composers.

Stefani Germanotta is a singer, songwriter, musician, actor and dancer of EGOT caliber. She's not just a pretty face, the lady has mad skillz.

Why isn't there a question about manufactured performance groups not being composers? There are manufactured performance groups that are composers and they look just like Blackpink. An example of such a group is GI-DLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I66oFXdf0KU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3szNvgQxHo

Katy Perry found success as a songwriter before she found success as a singer, and has written songs for Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Selena Gomez, and Nikki Minaj, among others. (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/katy-perry-wr...) Most of her own songs are co-written in studio with her collaborators on the song (meaning the feat artist and the producers), with each collaborator pitching in or more of the hooks or verses.

Ariana Grande has written a few of her own songs (though none of these were released as singles).

Perhaps you meant that neither Katy Perry or Ariana Grande are composers (who write the instrumental portion of the song)?

I think they mean "Katy Perry" and "Ariana Grande" are fictional characters as the public knows them. They are characters played by two artists and supported by media/storytelling.

This reminds me a bit of what I've heard about pro wrestling. There's a bit more story and theater to pro wrestling, but a lot of times the characters' personality derives from the person 'playing' them, with the knob turned to 12.

For others wondering about this style of entertainment, it's called 'kayfabe'

"Kayfabe, in the United States, is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks in a manner similar to other forms of fictional entertainment. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on-camera."

Outside of the entertainment industry, politics is an obvious example, though wikipedia states:

"It has long been claimed that kayfabe has been used in American politics, especially in election campaigns, Congress, and the White House, but no evidence of actual usage of kayfabe in Washington has ever been uncovered. In interviews as Governor of Minnesota, former wrestler Jesse Ventura often likened Washington to wrestling when he said that politicians "pretend to hate each other in public, then go out to dinner together.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

^ this.

I find the idea of being fed a story fascinating because a successful story feels more real than life itself and I'm not sure you can separate the two (life and the stories we tell ourselves). Once you can see it for what it is, that it's just a story, it breaks the illusion. But a really powerful story sucks you back in time and time again, and sometimes, you forget that you were being told a story in the first place.

And now after typing the above paragraph I sit wondering how many stories I currently believe are real, are just stories after all. Money being one of the most powerful.

> putting their names as writers for songs of poor black artists, so they (the producers) can get royalties

Why do you need to be a writer to get royalties. Would the producers not be able to ask for a royalty regardless?

It's broken down of there is X royalties then A, B, C, D each have percentages. In this Case Say producers are A, they're getting a cut that's established, but now they're taking a percentage of D. So in this instance they're expanding their ownership through pressure of taking a cut from someone else.

Record producers are not entitled to royalties unless they have songwriting, composer, or performance credits on a song. Essentially, they're the guys who bring everyone together and make sure a song comes out at the end.

Many record producers do participate in the songwriting or composition process and are credited for that work (for example, Jay-Z), but the vast majority don't (for example, Glen Wallachs, co-founder of Capital Records).

Some producers do get "points" just for production, even if they don't get a full writer credit.

Production can mean anything and everything from project management, sound design, co-writing, arranging to hands-on instrumental parts - to turning up once a week and saying "Sounds great. Carry on."

The split depends on the producer/artist agreement.

Session musicians don't usually get points even though they may literally write their parts. In publishing terms a song is melody+lyrics, and everything else is work-for-hire arrangement.

This often gets renegotiated because it's clearly nonsense. But that's the starting point.

No, the law, and more importantly, the guilds (here, the SGA and SCL), are quite strict on these points.

A producer cannot "negotiate" creative credit if they did not earn it, because the guilds will not allow it.

If a producer wants writing credit, they must earn the writing credit by performing creative activities as specified by the guild rules. Project management and other "producing" activities do not count. Note however that the creative contributions of session musicians under WFH arrangements are generally attributed to their employer--i.e., to the producer, and SCL rules generally apply to determine the creative contribution the producer may claim for the work of session musicians.

Co-writing and arranging are not "producing" activities, they are writing and composition activities which can qualify for songwriting and composing credit. Few producers participate creatively in their songs, but the ones that do tend to be the more famous ones (like Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Dr. Luke, etc.) and are use usually artists in their own right.

Bingo; This "appeal to the court of public opinion" strikes me as a last resort due to a lack of negotiation leverage.

A lot of people seem to be taking a legalistic or moralistic view on this. Along the lines of "copyright works like this" or "people should get credit for what they do".

The economic view would be something like:

- There's a pie to be split, often beforehand. Some players are in better negotiating positions than others. Sadly, if you don't know a lot of performers, you'll have a hard time getting a bigger slice from the one that shows up.

- It's not actually relevant who is on the document as a "writer". This is simply a thing to be negotiated over so that the performer is incentivized to do the recording. It's the same thing as putting up sales tax on a purchaser of goods, legally the buyer is paying x% extra, but economically the buyer and the seller actually split the bill according to negotiating power.

- What will happen if it's enshrined that only the person who actually wrote the piece gets his name on it? Well there will be other things to bargain over. For instance, maybe you get your name exclusively on the song, but you put it in a company and the performer gets a piece of the company.

The writers are trying to affect their negotiating power by introducing a new element into the contract process: social pressure.

Heretofore there's been a gentleman's agreement about writing credits which benefited the artist, and that's largely been enforced by the reality that artists (and publishers) need writers less than writers need them.

But, what does a pop artist in the 21st century need more than anything in order to succeed? Their image on social media. The underlying threat here is the class issues, and the tactical deployment of the gig economy (song writers driving Ubers) was not accidental.

When the word "exploitation" starts getting thrown around, and comparisons to how black artists were treated in the early years of the music industry start getting made, the pressure on artists and their representation will grow, and the dynamics of the contract process will change. That's what the writers are hoping will happen, anyway.

This seems like a reductive view which is based on ignorance of how songwriting royalties work.

Songwriting credit is copyright in the music and lyrics of the song. Artist credit is copyright in a specific recording of a song.

So if you write a song which is a great song, and Arianna Grande records a lackluster version which nobody likes that much, but then several other artists pick up on the fact that it's a great song and record their own highly successful versions, then the songwriter would do very well from this, but Arianna Grande wouldn't share in the later success of the cover versions.

If Arianna gets a 30% writers credit just for putting her own 'vibe' on the original recording, then she participates in the upside of the cover versions, even though they might have been successful despite her rather than because of her.

It feels like in order to have this conversation intelligently, we all need to me on the same page about how royalties work, and the difference in royalty types (at least mechanical vs performance royalties).

Even more, this is all slightly different (or completely different) based on region, country etc.

It isn't necessarily how they work. It's that people are wanting cuts from both pies instead of only the pie for the work they did.

There's a lot of nuance here, though. Say that the song kicks around and kicks around a bunch of artists refuse it and then eventually an artist makes some changes to it and personalizes it, records it and makes it big. All of a sudden, because of the promotion behind that artist or whatever, the song has a lot of value. And the artists wanted points before they invested the time or whatever in to it.

I'm not saying that its right, only we always want to simplify things that aren't really simple.

From the comments I've read so far, I'd say next to nobody here knows the split difference between record contracts and publishing contracts.

Here's how it was when I studied this 15 years ago.

In a traditional big four record contract, the artist (which for a band like Korn is five people), the record label gets 92% and the artist gets 8% (to split between them), but that's only on domestic (US) sales. On international sales the split is worse at 96%/4%. The artist would typically also pay for any damaged product, which mattered more in the case of shellac records as they are more brittle and broke more often.

For a publishing contract there's more variance in the split but it would typically be more like 60/40.

The music business has been massively "democratized" last few decades.

Now anyone can record high quality music at home. Anyone can self publish their music for the world to enjoy. Both were unthinkable a few decades ago.

But there are still a few gatekeepers, and gatekeepers will usually charge for opening their gate. Why wouldn't they?

A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs. Whoever they choose will sell 100x more. So in one sense it's fair they get a share of the money they create by adding their fame and talent to the song.

Performer do get a share.

The question is if performers should get songwriting royalties for songs they didn't write.

Having the power to bully does not justify bullying. They could negotiate the contract differently. Taking credit for something they didn't do is fraud, no matter how the market tolerates it.

Agreeing to share the song writing income is negotiating the contract differently.

> A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs. Whoever they choose will sell 100x more. So in one sense it's fair they get a share of the money they create by adding their fame and talent to the song.

I don't think this is actually true, at least if you define "good" as "likely to be a hit". There's a reason top pop performers go for songs written by songwriters with a proven track record, the most famous of which is perhaps Max Martin. Not anyone can write (and produce) songs that consistently appeal to whatever the public preferences of the day are. And no one wants to take unnecessary risks.

"Now anyone can record high quality music at home."

Eh, to an extent. Audio production is a highly involved process. Few people have the equipment and knowledge to mic instruments & track sound properly, mix audio properly, apply professional-level production, master the tracks properly, master the album properly... It's not as easy as having a computer and some software.

You can get a pretty good sound at home now for sure but for professional albums you still need a decent professional studio. And even at home, getting good mics and hardware is still quite costly.

"A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs."

There are famous or well-known (in the industry) songwriters that get chosen time and time again because they can consistently produce hits.

"Anyone" was a poor word choice. I meant more "any supremely talented musician".

A few decades ago, even the greatest talents in the world needed a recording contract to reach a large audience, and that went through a few large companies.

Today that still helps to get the best equipment and the best people working on your stuff. But you can also record in a home studio with better tech than The Beatles ever had access to.

Not a flat playing field at all, but I think a fair amount of people do come up that way.

As for the best songwriters... I don't really know the business, and I don't want to pretend to. You're probably right for the Megahits. Maybe I'm right for the filler tracks?

"A few decades ago, even the greatest talents in the world needed a recording contract to reach a large audience, and that went through a few large companies."

Ah yeah, this I do agree with. With today's tech it's relatively easy to get youtube/soundcloud-grade quality. It's not super cheap but one can get by with a decent camera, a decent usb interface like a scarlett 2i2, and a mic or two depending on the instrument.

It's never been easier to get discovered thanks to soundcloud, youtube, instagram, etc. Very different from having to play gigs at the right places (sometimes for a long time!) and hope one gets discovered by someone there. I was thinking more of professional studio albums.

My macbook pro and a decent USB microphone can produce far more professional demos than the Beatles could produce in 1964. If you listen to, say, the Lost Lennon Tapes, a high-school student can do higher-quality production today, based purely on youtube how-to videos.

Sufficient for a pro album ready for radio play? Probably not. But good enough to monetize on youtube? All day long.

There is a lot more to making good quality recordings then having good equipment. There's arrangement, mic placement, room acoustic treatment, mixing and EQ, mastering.

Never said their wasn't. But there can be no doubt that both the equipment and the knowhow is vastly more easy to access today than it was then.

They added that composers were often subjected to "bully tactics and threats" by artists and executives who wanted to take a share of the songwriting royalties.

Ultimately, I wonder where the money ends up between the artist and the executive.

This article (not the pact's message) seems to be unfairly framing this as writers vs artists, but the real bad guy could be some suit at UMI or EMG...

It sucks for the writers all the same, but don't misplace your anger.

Labels have been cooking the books and running dirty schemes since forever. Hell even Pink Floyd wrote a song about it.

I would not be shocked in the slightest if a few artists are increasingly also starting to throw their weight around and that is gaining some traction and becoming more of a norm as well. Thats also not new, ranging from the inane (no brown m&m's back stage) to stuff like this.

I think a lot of people would be shocked to learn that

1. Many artists dont write their own songs

2. Many bands dont perform in their own studio albums and often use hired guns/session musicians

3. A lot of 1&2 are actually a relatively small number of people with a pretty prodigious output.

People like Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, Sia Furler, Dr. Luke, Bonnie McKee in the current sphere/conversation.

But even going back to Elvis...Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are the actual writers for Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock etc. And theres some for other Genre's, Motown had their own with Lamont Dozier and Brian and Eddie Holland. Otis Blackwell, Prince Nelson Rogers etc etc.

This revelation happened for me when i started getting into playing music. Over the years I have gained appreciation for those that dont really need to deal with 1 and 2, but that takes a very special type of talent and dedication.

The m&m's story might be misrepresented here. The true story is that they had extremely complicated rigging for their stage show. By putting the M&M's into the contract (a canary of sorts) they were able to ensure that it was read. Otherwise they knew immediately there could be problems.

https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9

Is this really the true story?

I see that claim a lot and it's obviously a nice story. But isn't it quite likely that they were just acting like obnoxious rock stars, and they made up the story later when they didn't like being legendary for being assholes anymore? Or are we just taking their word for it?

Everything can be a conspiracy if one tries hard enough.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not no evidence except the word of the person denying a story which paints them in a bad light.

If true, it is very surprising. Surely in most venues the people responsible for back stage hospitality are not the same people responsible for lighting, electrics, sound installation and stage safety? Isn't it quite likely that one of those teams would have met the requirements perfectly, and the other would have cut corners? How about the situation where extremely professional and scrupulous venues do all the important things right but resent having to sort M&Ms for overpaid stars? Wouldn't it have made more sense for Van Halen to have their own electrical inspectors who would check safety and reliability of the installation? How do other touring rock groups make sure everything is set up correctly? How did Van Halen come up with this particular canary test among all others?

Is it really that conspiratorial that an extremely famous 20 year old acted like a dick, and that at age thirty he made up a story to cover up his youthful dickishness?

Your assertion that they were dicks is funny. Even if they just didn't like brown M&Ms if they were paying for the venue then surely it was no different than expecting their personal luggage to be carried to the dressing room, or having banners hung. Why is this request so egregious that it's dickish but having the right brand of sparkling water is not?

> Surely in most venues the people responsible for back stage hospitality are not the same people

They all get paid from the same pool. It's the boss they're testing, not the stage hand.

Does the boss treat every requirement like a requirement and have it done seriously or do they pick and choose based on what they think is important and surprise the artist?

The original story has been told for around 50 years with the widely noted implication "this was dickish behavior - they didn't have any particular preference for non-brown M&Ms but just wanted to mess with the people waiting on them". Even the 'debunkings' invariably recognize this interpretation of the original story.

Obviously part of the reason this story gets told a lot is because a lot of people, many of them management consultants who charge by the day for nuggets of catchy wisdom like this one, love the idea that organizations have a homogenous culture and the same ones that skimp on the buffet preparation also skimp on the rigging safety. Actually, this is complete fantasy. It's perfectly believable to think that the same boss makes sure the artists have everything in their dressing room they want, no matter how demanding, but thinks that they won't check the bigger, critical but more expensive stuff.

> The original story has been told for around 50 years with the widely noted implication "this was dickish behavior

I didn't ask when people started making up the claim, I asked how the claim was reasonable. The person sorting M&Ms would have been paid just the same. How does a reasonable request become dickish?

> they didn't have any particular preference for non-brown M&Ms but just wanted to mess with the people waiting on them"

Mess with? There's that unsupported judgement again. Am I messing with the cook if I ask for less salt, or no onions on my burger? Or are those valid things for a customer to want? Do I have to prove a medical reason for not wanting onions? Or brown M&Ms?

> management consultants [...] love the idea that organizations have a homogenous culture and the same ones that skimp on the buffet preparation also skimp on the rigging safety.

That's generally true but it doesn't need to be. If it saved them one bad show ever it's worth it. Even if it didn't, if they thought it would it was still probably a safe investment.

I'd be happy if a performer went out of their way to make sure that a live event that I paid for and travelled to attend went off without a hitch. To do otherwise would be dickish.

While I’ve heard David Lee Roth’s argument here. I’m not sure I buy it. For one, the rider itself somewhat had a Streisand effect of its own. So it wasn’t much of a canary once it was public knowledge.

And two. Most large touring acts have all sorts of heavy equipment. Zepp, Skynyrd had enourmous amounts of stuff. Even to date, RHCP has a boat load of gear they lug around because like many they don’t use a venues PA, they use their own gear because it’s quintessential to their tone. Hell the Grateful Dead had a wall of sound.

All that is to say....sure that could be a reason. May even have been the reasoning to start out. But I’m not sure I buy it personally. That band was also known for their.....persona. Especially with David Lee Roth.

After a certain level of fame, the artists are CEOs of their own brand.

As someone who grew up with the advent of the world wide web and got my start coding on Geocities, I very much appreciate the choice to add a scrolling marquee and visit counter towards the bottom of the site.

Geocities, Angelfire, and Maxpages. GIFs everywhere. Backgrounds tiled with GIFs. If it didn't sparkle in some way that distracted from the content of the page, you weren't doing it right.

What a time to be alive.

Songwriters getting the short stick is an old fact in the 'industry'. (There's a Songwriter's Hall of Fame - ever seen it's inductees on TV?)

Back in the rock'n'roll era, with the new 'teenager' category raining allowances on labels, label-owners often got a co-writer credit on songs. (And then there was the vinyl shipped 'off the books'.) They also typically grabbed up publishing rights.

Since streaming began: I've seen figures like $2 per 1000 streams for big-name artists. I've never seen figures mentioned for songwriters. At one time a top-10 hit might be covered by dozens of big names (each a potential revenue source for decades) - today stuff comes & goes quickly.

Interesting to read this as from my British point of view, I thought the opposite was true: songwriters took the lion's share while musicians got relatively little.

Thinking about The Beatles, for example, Paul McCartney is way richer than Ringo Starr. The common wisdom is it's because he wrote the songs and Ringo was just the drummer.

Also there's the example of the song "Bitter Sweet Symphony" where members of the Rolling Stones claimed songwriting credits and took all the song's royalties [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony

Songwriting is akin to salary: writer gets paid every time, non depending if the song was a complete failure, while all the risk, organization and marketing is on the pop star.

So I guess the answer is no.

Actually they don't. There may or may not be a publishing advance, and a lot of songs do the rounds on spec.

This demand ignores the economics of songwriting.

The thing in short supply is not catchy tunes and beautiful lyrics. The thing in short supply is the attention of an audience in a world full of distractions. A popstar brings you attention. You bring them the hit song. You will get a smaller share of a huge pie in return.

If you wish, you can take a 100% share of a tiny pie and keep your artistic author's integrity.

That's the tradeoff.

I wonder if Max Martin or Dr. Luke have these issues? Is it a matter of the larger the stable of artists and hits you have in your portfolio then the more negotiating power you have? I'm just curious, I honestly don't know.

According to "The Song Machine" [0], track-and-hook has largely replaced singer/songwriter for top hits. The book details how Dr. Luke (a very talented guitar player) himself works with a ProTools tech to lay down beats, chord progressions, and instrumentation, then outsources the melodies to "hook writers/topliners" - the working song is sent to ~20 topliners and they aren't compensated whatsoever unless their hook is selected for a song. Also, virtually all the lyrics are outsourced to lyricists, and so on. It's funny that, in turn, the producers themselves seem to outsource much of the songwriting - it's turtles all the way down!

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28789721-the-song-machin...

Wow I had no idea this was taking place. It reminds me a little of the fight hollywood screenwriters have fought to get equal billing and recognition. I always assumed that the writer got the most money!

Maybe in Christopher Nolan's case that may be true. Even in the rare case of an original script i doubt that the writers get any significant slice of the pie. It would be interesting to know more about how the film industry pays its contributors.

I don't remember all the details but as a long time listener to Scriptnotes (if the industry of screenwriting for Hollywood interests you highly recommended) it gets pretty complicated. First people get paid for the initial draft. Then they can get paid for rewrites (many contracts come with provisions to give the writer some number of drafts back and forth with the studio/director). Sometimes these can be negotiated into yet more drafts if things are close and the studio is happy with the writer.

More commonly, at some point a different writer is brought in to update it, sometimes heavy rewrites, sometimes just tweaks. Once it gets filmed, the writer's guild has a process of arbitration to determine who gets credit, based on roughly who is believed to have contributed the most original material. The person or persons who are considered the primary creators get residuals based on % of money made (actual money made not the Hollywood accounting bullshit).

Screenwriters have a good union and are paid pretty well for movies that get made. Not star money, and usually not director money, but more than just about any other roles. Their residuals can also be substantial for a successful show/movie.

They also have very prominent credits, second only to the director (notice it's the second to last in opening credits or second if it's closing credits).

Their biggest issue is all the unpaid work they get asked to do. They can do months and even years of work without any compensation with projects that aren't really moving forward.

Yeah, writers have been kinda screwed. That goes for screenwriters, too, but I think they have actually done a fairly good job of standing up for themselves.

The one relationship that immediately springs to mind, when I think of this type of thing, is Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

I understand that they split up for a while, and that Elton John's music lost its lustre during that period.

Although I like some of Elton John's work, I am not enough of a fan to speak in more than a fairly vague sense. I just remember people complaining about it, when it was happening.

Keith Reid was also given top billing, for Procol Harum. He usually showed up in group photos.

The EJ and Taupin collaboration is one of the greatest in pop music history, only Lennon/McCartney exceeds the quality and quantity of hits the team produced.

I'm sure it's not as cut and dry on every song necessarily but Elton writes the music and Taupin writes the lyrics. Of course EJ performs the songs.

Neither would be what they are without the other, certainly, the same as Lennon and McCartney's solo work was great but didn't come close to their collaboration.

Anyways just want to point out EJ isn't one of the "manufactured" pop artists who had others write his songs for him. He's a true artist and musician in his own right even though Taupin is obviously hugely important to his success.

This is an excerpt from Seabrook's book, which is pretty good, I've read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Song-Machine-Inside-Hit-Factory/dp/03...

I haven't read the piece, but the headline:

"Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write"

... makes me think of this Don Draper quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Y6CIyyBcI

Entering the modern commercial music industry to then complain about having to share credits is like getting a software developer job and be upset that you are expected to write code.

At the end of the day, the singer brings in 100x more value to the table because what ever genetic lottery they won combined with whatever they did to capitalize on that means millions of people with poor taste want to throw money at them for the illusion of them being a musician. The song writers are much more replacable then the "face" in this scheme regardless of where the talent lies.

Anyway point being, don't get into commercial music if you don't like it. There are plenty of ways to maintain artistic integrity as a trade off for money but these writers choose to sell out instead. So don't sell out and then whine about not being able to keep your integrity.

Well, a lot of heartache and nonsense could be avoided ny paying songwriters fairly but could a song written for Arethra Franklin havethe same effect when sung by say Solange Knowles?

Vietnamese pop music is really interesting in that songwriters will normally be credited alongside the artist at the start of music videos.

I wonder if we could ever see this in the west.

Alternatively:

"Pop stars ask for share of future revenue from covers of songs they make famous."

"Producer who brings amazing sound to good lyrics asks for share of future revenue."

> Change a word, get a third

Change a word. Get a third.

Who's taking claim for WAP?

Several people, all listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAP_(song).

The song has topped numerous charts, for instance Pitchfork and Rolling Stone's best song of 2020. Why wouldn't they want to take credit?

I'd be proud even if it wasn't a massive hit. It's an insanely catchy song, performed by two women who deliver the lines perfectly, on top of a very creative production (I especially like the repetitive "there's some hoes in this house" line that plays throughout the entire song).

I don't think it's fair to the people involved to paint it something it's not just because the sexual language makes you uncomfortable.

that line is actualy a sample from a 1992 song, so presumably frank ski got a cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IHUl8CwCvI

Interesting, I had no idea. Thank you :)

fwiw, it's not the sexual imagery that bothers most people, it's the degradation they hear in the rest of the song.

"Hoes in this house" for example.

Sex is natural, calling women whores is not. One is a fine thing for a kid to see, the other is problematic and requires you to explain that their language shouldn't be repeated, that it's probably indicative of depression or systematic oppression of women, etc.

Nothing in the song appears to be feminine empowerment as they defend it by saying - it's just soft-core porn masquerading as music. Porn is porn and when made without harm is a lifestyle choice, it's the masquerade that makes it icky.

That's completely fair criticism in my opinion, but not the one I see invoked by most people. In my experience, most of the time the sexual language is the problem, and that is completely bonkers to me because, as you said, sex is a big part of human life and it makes sense for it to be reflected in art.

Actually, I have since watched a bit of the video and I now think it is the imagery as well.

Not the scantily clad ladies dry-humping. But that they look like they're doing it for the male gaze, as they stare into the camera instead of each other's eyes.

I guess it feels like what you'd get if you tried to have a three-way with two hookers. Hollow and depressing.

While I agree with you that there's definitely a male gaze aspect to it, I don't have an opinion on whether that's necessarily a bad thing when done by women.

On the one hand I can see the harm it can make by normalizing the stigma that women need to do things for the pleasure of men, but on the other hand I'm not sure preventing them from doing that would help the issue at all. It's a complex subject for sure.

Prevent? Gosh, no. I am sure that nothing good would come from that. As you say, if they choose it... (And if someone likes it, good for Cardi I guess.)

I'm just trying to answer your question from a few posts back about what I found distasteful. The best summary I can come up with is 'women trying to act like whores to be attractive'.

Maybe that's not how it is for Cardi, and that's her image of healthy sexuality, but I wouldn't show it to my kids or my lover.

As an aside, I realized that I watched the grammy performance which may not be the same as the music video.

Seems primarily like Cardi B's writer started it and Cardi B modified it.

You know what he's about. He's just a boring old culture warrior who has to inject his personal politics into every situation while simultaneously decrying how everything is now political.

Or it’s a joke

What makes it a joke? Why is it funny? Explain to everyone why no one wanting to take credit for WAP is funny.

I don't think there's a reason that doesn't circle back to my original assessment of the guy.

Because the lyrics are amazingly vulgar and are inappropriate for most conversations.

How does that make not wanting to take credit for it a joke?

And was this the first song that was "amazingly vulgar" or "inappropriate for most conversations"?

This is a conversation, not a deposition.

Deflection after deflection. If you really have no defense of the guy, don't step in to defend him.

For the next reason Alan Smithee exists, possibly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

All the people who created WAP are not listed in this link. On Spotify, WAP's credits list

Performed by

Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion

Written by

Austin Owens, Belcalis Almanzar, Frank Rodriguez, James Foye iii, Jordan Thorpe, Megan Pete

Produced by

Ayo & Keyz

We can compare this to a Kpop song called IDEA that 2 of the same people who wrote WAP worked on

Performed by

Taemin

Written by

Adrian Mckinnon, Austin Owens, James Foye iii, Jimmy Claeson, Moon Seol Ree, Tay Jasper

Western stars are extremely dishonest about their input into their music.

Korean TV giving credit to the songwriters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4wOjOEcRZg

In American rap culture, rap artists are usually expected to write their own lyrics without significant help from other songwriters, with the exception of samples, production, and any parts of the song that are not rapped.

https://www.complex.com/music/2012/08/the-nas-controversy-an...

That's why the WAP songwriters are the rappers (Megan thee Stallion and Cardi B), the producers (Ayo N Keyz), and the songwriter of the sampled track (Frank Ski). Many other genres do not have this kind of expectation.

If you are accusing the WAP songwriters of employing ghostwriters, that is a severe allegation and needs evidence to be taken seriously.

Everyone loves the free market up the point of monopoly. Same ol story different bizniz. IMHO since the fall of the Wall Conservatives have stopped bothering to justify the free market as providing for all and have adopted Monopoly as a right of the rich. As if they earned their monopoly. The truth is more that government corrupt^M^M^M lobbying, has permitted it.

If it were a truly free market the entire music business would have to collapse or adapt as copyright wouldn't be a thing.

I personally just try to exit the whole system. I love https://freemusicarchive.org/.

I would love it if culture wasn't driven by pure profit and homogenized into bland predictability.

FMA also provides a way to donate directly to artists.

I'd argue that the producers/composers are far more important to pop songs today than the writers.

That's beside the point. The performers are starting to demand a portion of the revenue stream that should be going to "people who aren't the performers".

Would there be a revenue stream without the performers?

No? But the point of the article is that the performers already have their own revenue stream.

Would there be a revenue stream without something to perform?

I don't have an opinion on the ethics of this one way or the other, but the pop stars should be responding by asking why the songwriters signed the particular contract they are complaining about in the first place if they felt so strongly about this.

Would there be a performer without something to perform?

That's a classic rent seeking argument, where people make money depending on how easy it is for them to sabotage something as opposed to how much they contribute.

I think in the context of music, composer and writer are essentially the same, but maybe you meant specifically text writer?

Yes. I was thinking more along the lines of songwriter === lyricist.

MusicBrainz has a relationship top-level called "writer" and under there are more specific relations "composer", "lyricist", "librettist" and "translator".

Do you also believe software developers should take a smaller cut/salary to pay more to sales, because without sales selling the product it is worthless? That's the equivalent to the argument you are making.

I have two music albums out, and I don't ever hesitate to tell people when I wrote, co-wrote, or re-arranged a song.

It never made me feel less accomplished to admit when I didn't write something.

That said, most of the time people just assume I wrote them all, unless they recognize the cover's original.

Seriously, who even listens to pop music these days??

"Nobody goes there anymore! It's too crowded!"

Do you know why it's called "pop music"?

Downloading Tik Tok will quickly disabuse you of any delusion that popular music has faded as a crucial driving force in the culture.

The majority of music listeners. It's designed to resonate with the lowest common denominator and capture the widest net possible.

Are pop songs inherently valuable? Artistically they're not usually interesting but in the market sense, would people listen to them without the massive marketing push?

I strongly support distribution of profits in the relation to the value being created. While it is absolutely possible, even commonplace, for organizations to exploit their workers and other smaller orgs, I also suspect that value in "hit" songs is created elsewhere: in production, marketing, name recognition of the singer, etc.

I'm not an IP lawyer, but I have a handful of patents. As a patent lawyer explained to me, the list of inventors on a patent should be strictly based on whether somebody actually invented something or not. It's not like an academic paper, where everybody on the team gets to be an "author."

In my view the same thing should apply to songwriting. The current standard is, you wrote a song if you wrote the melody or the words. Sometimes those are two different people.

If you added value in other ways, add your name to some other contract specifying distribution of proceeds.

The songwriting is extremely valuable, otherwise just write your own damn songs.

As an aside, "inherent value" is a mushy concept that seems to defy any meaningful description.

OP is primarily about money, not credit.

The songwriting is extremely valuable, otherwise just write your own damn songs.

If it's so valuable, how can these companies find "hit" writers for £100 a piece? While it is entirely possible for something of immense artistic or technical value to not be priced commensurately on the market, I've heard these songs, this is not the case here.

Because the hit writers who are working for $100 a piece, are expecting that if their song gets picked up, they will share in its success through their publishing royalties.

If you do that, then performers will just exert their power in other ways (by reducing royalties for song-writers).

Fundamentally, this is happening because the quality of the song-writing isn't really all that important to the success of a pop star. Marketing, production quality, and sex appeal are more important. It's really not that hard to write a 4-chord song about breaking up with your boyfriend.

If song-writers think they should be getting rich off these popular songs, there is nothing stopping them from performing the song themselves. They don't do that though because they know they'll make more money letting Taylor Swift sing it.

Why do you not think pop songs are artistically interesting?

It’s all aesthetics to be sure but a lot of pop music doesn’t take risks. Song structures are formulaic as are chord progressions and the notes used for melodies.

How many hit songs use the same I-V-vi-IV progression? It works is why but it isn’t interesting to a discerning listener.

It seems like a lot of pop music is more like fashion than music. Image leads and after removing the stylistic facade you see the same underlying infrastructure. There are exceptions to the rule of course.

Nirvana was an interesting pop music band because many of their songs used weird progressions. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” shouldn’t work according to therory, but it obviously does.

And then of course how pop music is mixed and mastered today. Almost no dynamic range because of the “loudness wars”.

That's fair criticism, but I don't think it makes pop music any less artistic. There's something to be said about music that goes beyond the listener's ears and also taps into fashion, make-up trends, viral dances and that kind of stuff. That's where the risk is, and while it's paid off in the past (like Lady Gaga, David Bowie, etc), there's also numerous cases where it didn't as much (Ava Max, Viktoria Modesta).

I also believe there's artistic value in music that understands it's just ear-candy and doesn't try to be something else. In a world where so many people are trying to score a hit with the same chord progression for example, the ones that succeed stand out in other factors, and in my opinion it doesn't matter if it's some catchy verse on the refrain or something about the performer like Lady Gaga's provocative performances back in the early 2010s.

It is what it is - it is popular for a reason. It doesn’t require effort from the listener and as you pointed out it lets people identify with a culture, etc. there’s a reason most people stop seeking out new music in their mid-20’s. Popular music is mainly a youth product which lets each cohort draw cultural boundaries from previous generations.

What’s great about modern info tech is it makes it easier to explore artists of your youth that you never knew about. You can get really deep which makes it feel like now music is still being made for you.

It isn’t like there aren’t infinite other styles for people that want it. Jazz is a great example of “musicians music” - lots of interesting ideas get explored there and dissonance is used which you rarely find in pop.

They actually have software that helps crank out hits nowadays. It’s an interesting time to be a songwriter in Nashville.

Yes, they're valuable because they capture many listeners and generate revenue. It doesn't need to interesting for it to be valuable.

Plenty of interesting music flies under the radar. Even without the massive marketing push some artists get, the same artists would still rise to the top producing familiar song structures the average listener can recognize.

I always wondered why we reward vapid pop star hacks who can't do anything without a freaking team of people doing everything for them.

Like Britney Spears for example, can't play instrument, can barely sing, can barely dance, needs a choreographer, can't write music nor lyrics.

And I'm not talking about Britney Spears now, I'm talking in her prime.

All she really brought to the table was her looks and ok singing ability and the ability to move to someone else's choreography.

No innovations of her own. Little inherent talent. And then in mid 2000s she put on some weight and then couldn't even do the choreography well and she always needs some backup vocals in live performances and what you hear on the CD is all super processed vocals.

In general, pop stars since then are just conduits for the efforts of more talented people.

Sure, you got the few talented ones like Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul (who, though not a great singer, a world class choreographer). But the rest of them ... same crap.

I'd rather see an ugly old haggard dude who looks like Lemmy perform songs that they wrote and composed on their guitar.

Well, because I like the finished product. Big fan of the Britney songs. Great end product. I don't need John Williams to have grown the tree and cut the wood to make the guitar that he plays Asturias on.

Michael Jackson wasn't talented. He had a choreographer.

The 2009 MJ documentary shows he was supremely talented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_This_Is_It

Of course he was. I was just reusing OPs same argument that britney's use of a choreographer is evidence that she is talentless

What surprises me the most is that that shitty "music" you hear nowadays is written by someone. I thought it was made by a computer or something. But if I think about it... it is logical, surely a computer makes better music.

Art is indisputably subjective.

My opinion is that they shouldn't care and in fact have no basis to complain. I consider it "work for hire", and they are being paid handsomely for their work. Do we developers complain when, if we work for Apple, that Apple takes credit for our work?

> they are being paid handsomely for their work.

I think the complaint is that they aren't being paid "adequately", but without actual numbers it's hard to tell. I suspect few of them are making SV developer salaries.

I suspect that the average is much higher than an SV salary. And the standard deviation is much higher too. More like in sports.

Well, sure, but the median is probably quite low.

Again - similar to sports. Is somewhat of a "winner take all" market.

no, but maybe we should

Is simple. Just remove "work for hire" from your contract.

Have you read their contract?

If you're being taken advantage of because of X it's a safe bet you don't have an anti-X clause in your contract...

“Other workers are trying to get a better deal than me and should cut it out” is one of my least-favorite opinions on labor matters.

The entire point is that they’re not being paid handsomely, they’re being taken advantage of. Did you even read past the headline?

Most pop hits are written by a dozen middle-aged Scandinavian men. I'm sure they are paid very handsomely.

Again, try reading the article before commenting.

I've read plenty on this topic. Believe me, those writers who reliably put out hits have NO problem paying their rent.

They claim writers are struggling to pay their rent, so I think the premise that they are being paid handsomely is in dispute.

Even if developers don't get direct credit, just having these big names in their CV increases their value massively.

I'm sure these songwriters put those big names on their CVs too

Most songwriters write songs then shop them around. They're not typically freelancers writing a song for an act for pay. They're like small software shops writing source code, and then the company that licenses that code, compiles it, and sells it is wanting a copyright on the source and royalties on other licenses sold.

You get whatever you and your legal team negotiate. Just like in any other business contract.

Yes, and when you regularly ask too much of the other party in those negotiations they band together and ask you to stop. Much like what's happening in the story.

Then they go on twitter and make it into a moral imperative to demonize you. Just part of negotiations.

>they are being paid handsomely for their work

Seems like someone didn't read the article...

Have you read the article? "Credit" here is not meant as recognition, it's meant as retribution. Performers put their name down as writers/producers despite being no part of the songwriting process, taking a cut from the writer's revenue, and additionally get revenue for their performance + merch, concert tickets, etc.

I mean, I have sympathy for the writers, but I also don't believe that it's necessarily equitable that a songwriter receives all the money when a song is played on the radio but the performer receives nothing (that is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Consider the case of "I Will Always Love You", written and originally performed by Dolly Parton but made globally famous by Whitney Houston. I mean, Parton is a pretty legendary songwriter, but let's be honest, the only reason that song was played over and over on the radio was Houston's voice. When Houston died and the song was again put in rotation on the radio, is it really fair that Parton received all the benefit of that and Houston's estate nothing?

In this case the writers are talking about "publishing" rights which are distinct and separate from the sound recording (I believe those are called the "master" rights).

----

Copyright is split into two main sections: copyright in the song (known as publishing rights) and copyright in the sound recording (known as master rights). The publisher only deals with the publishing right, which is the songwriting side and includes the music and lyrics.

Traditionally, a record label will own the master right, which is basically the right to use a particular recording of that song, but if you’re a self-releasing artist or producer then you will most likely own this right yourself.

https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/music-publishing-explained-fo...

In the US a performer still receives nothing when the song is played on the radio, all the royalties go to the writers: https://soundcharts.com/blog/radio-royalties#why-songwriters...

No. This is a subtle difference but a very important one. In the US, the performance right on broadcast radio is not collected at all. The publishing rights are collected on.

That's really not the same thing as "publishers take all the money".

Yes, what you've written about broadcast vs. publishing rights on the radio is correct, but what I wrote "In the US a performer still receives nothing when the song is played on the radio, all the royalties go to the writers" is still 100% correct (I made no mention about the source of the rights), so I'm not sure why you started your comment with "No."

Performing artists can also collect performance royalties, but I think am/fm radio is excluded from this and I don't know how much it is in comparison to songwriter royalties.

>> is it really fair that Parton received all the benefit of that and Houston's estate nothing?

According to a quick Google search, Houston made over $30 million from the Bodyguard soundtrack, and millions more after her death.

The Bodyguard soundtrack could have been recorded without Houston.

It could not have been recorded without Parton.

Maybe I'm just pissy from being subjected to 60 hours a week of top 40 radio for the last month at work, but I don't think any of them deserves a dime. In fact, I think they owe me something for pain and suffering.

I swear I'm not a music snob. 6 months ago when I heard this batch of songs the first time, I thought some of them were pretty catchy. Although I don't know that anyone will argue this was a great year for music. But I heard that "go out with a bang" song at least 4 times yesterday. About a week ago, I finally listened to the lyrics and started to like it a little. Then I heard it 20 more times and I'm over it.

- This is an issue due to large corporations owning many radio stations across the US.

- This is an issue due to music labels being unable or unwilling to take risks.

- Regardless if you like the music or not, people need to be fairly paid for their work. Musicians/Labels should not be strong-arming/bullying songwriters into taking credit for their work (and thus receiving royalties for work they did not do).

2020 was a great year for music, but not if you only listen to the radio...

The artists listed in the article are the same ones I have to listen to all day, which is why I thought my whining was relevant. I know there's good music out there and I've got it on my phone. I just didn't have my headphones charged yesterday and hit a wall listening to the same songs.

I don't listen to the radio on my own time. I've just been working with guys who cycle through 3 stations that all play the exact same songs.

Have you tried getting better coworkers? /s

One possible solution is to see if there are independently-run stations in your area. I live near a university, so there is a student-run station that explicitly is not allowed to play top-charting songs. So I get some good music discovery, and awkward banter from new djs. If you have access to a computer, then you have access to basically any station. soma.fm is pretty good.

It definitely is frustrating to see the same songs on the radio over and over, but that's really an issue from iHeartRadio (formerly Clear Channel) owning stations across the country. Boycott iHeartRadio if you can.

I just don't listen to the radio outside of the news and talk shows. We do have a college station that's pretty good most of the time, but it's not always my kind of music. I don't have access to a computer per se, but I've got one in my pocket. I just didn't have my headphones charged because I'll go through periods where I don't even want to listen to my own music and these bone conduction headphones don't have good enough quality to understand a podcast.

These two coworkers, actually, are excellent. I love working with them. Just their music choice for work is horrible. I'm pretty lucky that the only things I have to complain about here are the hours and background music.

Sorry to hear this is inflicted on you. What industry sector?

(I used to work in an office doing web development with music on all day. Didn't mind it then. Now I work at home in silence.)

https://pipedown.org.uk/ this is a worthy campaign.

It's manufacturing I guess you'd call it. It normally doesn't bother me. Most everyone here has a good variety they listen to. It's just the two I'm working with right now who are apparently ok with listening to top 40 stations all day long. It's largely my fault. I could have said something, but I was in a pissy mood to start and I tend to come off nastier than I mean to when I'm in a mood.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com