Songwriting 101: Don’t Expect to Get Rich

A musician friend said about negotiating a deal on a song, “Well, part of something is better than all of nothing.” He was referring to the fact that when you do get artist interest in a song, it’s not unusual for everyone to want a piece of the pie. Either you are willing to give up part of your ownership or no deal.  You may have been dazzled by reports of how much money you can make if you hit it big, but that’s as easy as winning the lottery. Here are a couple scenarios from personal experience.

Expenses Add Up

On a recent pitch sheet, a publisher wanted songs for two established artists. The listing specified that he would require 100% of the publishing, non-negotiable. Was he going to reimburse the songwriter for the cost of the demo, roughly $700? The answer, as expected: no.

But the demo price is only one of the expenses that add up quickly for the songwriter. Not every song is a winner. For talking purposes, let’s say you spend $700 each on five demos. You are $3500 out of pocket even though only one shows promise in the market. You also paid around $200 up to $400 plus for a year’s subscription to the pitch sheet.

If you belong to a songwriting organization, you owe annual dues, as you do for membership in performance rights organizations like ASCAP or BMI in the U.S. If you are eligible to be a voting member of the Recording Academy, that annual due currently costs you another hundred bucks.

Those numbers do not include the dollars spent on home recording equipment or music gear. Notice that the time you put into writing the song and pitching it receives zero dollar credit. You labor for free. But if you put a figure on your hours, you can see that for one song to reach the stage of “recorded and released,” a songwriter will likely have invested thousands of dollars.

It’s Tough to Recoup

So you get a cut and the money rolls in. Not really.  You may wait six months or longer to receive performance royalties, a good year if the artist is internationally based. Mechanical/digital royalties for sale of that one song on an album are currently 9.1 cents, split between the publisher/s and the songwriter/s. Another example from personal experience: an American artist wanted to record a song but only on the condition that the artist received credit for co-writing and, along with another publisher, a share in the royalties. In still another case, the same song was translated for an artist in Europe. The translator legitimately deserved and received a share of the writing credit, ergo a share of the royalties. After two years on this one song, not a penny of investment had been recouped. Three years later, the performance royalties (no digital/mechanical dollars) came in under $100 in spite of the fact that the song was a number one pop dance of the year in that country. Getting a report of sales can also be problematic since labels are often indies and don’t have the accounting resources of the majors.

I once hit it big in the 1990s with one song on one major artist’s album. But that came after ten years of doing demos and pitching. You do the numbers and you’ll understand why I say don’t expect to get rich. What about artists versus songwriters? TIME magazine online published an article about a two-man band titled “Want to Be a Rock Star? You’ll Need $100,000.” There you go.