Bonnie Mckee, songwriter of multiple hit singles says “become a producer because producers get paid” when asked about songwriting in the music industry.

This requires some explanation, because Bonnie is absolutely right… and its a huge problem that no one knows how to solve. The importnat thing to understand about songwriting in the us, is that songwriter do not get paid by artists. They do not have contracts ith artists. When they write a song, they agree with all the co-writers on how to split the ownership of the song, and then they get paid royalties at rates set essentailly by the govt. (it’s a little more complicated but that’s the best way to think about it).

Producers are often songwriters. But legally a producer has a very different role; they oversee the process of recording. They do have contracts with artists, and they sacrfice their ownership of the masters recording to the artist in exchange for a fee. They may also get “points on the record” (usually 4% of the master royalties of the track), and because producers argue that they are also songwriting, they get splits in the songs.

In the past 20 years, the share of song royalties going to professional songwriters has decreased significantly, because artists and producers have nosed in. Also songwriters work in larger groups, and don’t really write any more songs! The result is that their income has plummeted. Note this only effects “topliners” songwriters who work on lyrics and melody. The “track writers” are all producers… they get producers fees!

One possible solution is for songwriters to get a fee to write like producers do. But this isn’t trivial… if they got this fee, they might also be forced to give up their ownership in the songs (just as producers give up their ownership in the master).