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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.