What if I told you that the songwriters behind Beyoncé's $407 million Cowboy Carter tour earned an average of $105,972 each, while she cleared at least $100 million?
When I first entered the music business, despite having little to no knowledge of how it all worked, one thing was very clear to me:
Songs are where it's at.
Songs are the foundation that allow an artist to create a connection with others.
Without songs that do this, an artist is basically nobody.
Therefore songwriters are foundationally incredibly important.
Their talent is the foundation to the success of every major artist on the planet.
The foundation to the success of every artist on the planet.
So with all of this in mind, you'd presume that these are people who are looked after by the music business.
You'd expect that they get fair and adequate compensation for the fact that it is their talents that write the hits that propel an artist to the top.
The arena and stadium shows would never be happening without those hits.
But here's the thing - as is the case with most everything else in this industry, the way that songwriters are compensated is just totally screwed up.
Despite providing the magic that massively contributes to the success of the performing artist, they only receive compensation from a handful of income streams:
Broadcast royalties - from radio plays, live performances, music played in venues, and streaming services
Mechanical royalties - from physical records, downloads, and streams
Sync licensing - royalties and fees for permission to use music in movies, TV commercials, TV shows, and video games
Sheet music royalties - some smaller income streams
That's it.
Meanwhile, songwriters get absolutely nothing from the massive income streams that exist because of their talent:
Merchandise drops - despite the songs massively contributing to building the artist's audience base, songwriters get zero compensation from merchandise revenue
Brand partnerships - the fact a brand partnership even exists is because the artist has songs connecting with an audience large enough that brands want to partner with them. Songwriters get none of this income
Subscription memberships - songwriters get no share of any of this income
Master recordings - despite the song being the key driver of audience acquisition, they get no compensation directly from master recordings
These income streams are mammoth for artists.
Therefore it is fundamentally unfair that songwriters are not receiving a share of the spoils.
The argument in the past would be that it was too complex to track, but today, with technology advancements, this is no longer the case.
Let me highlight one other thing that's fundamentally unfair - the live performance element of broadcast rights.
When a performing artist does a live show, a percentage of ticket sales gets paid to the performance rights organization (PRO) in that territory.
The PRO collects these royalties and pays them to songwriters.
The percentage ranges from:
2% in the US
3% in the UK
Considering the magnitude of songs in creating breakthroughs, this is a pathetically low cut of the spoils.
This looks much worse when you break down how this money gets distributed.
Let me use Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour as an example:
Estimated gross income: $407 million USD
Songs performed: 39 songs across the tour
Average PRO percentage: 2.5%
Total allocated to songwriting: $10.175 million USD
But here's where it gets worse - most songwriters have publishers, and 50% of broadcast royalties go to publishers.
With splits often at 50/50, only 75% of the income goes to songwriters directly.
So we have $7.63 million USD in the kitty for songwriters.
This sounds like a lot, but the Cowboy Carter album has 72 songwriter credits.
This has to get divided among all of them.
Here's where things get even more unfair.
Logic would suggest there's some kind of weighting system for how these funds are distributed.
You'd imagine that if somebody wrote a song that created more success than another song, that song would receive a higher percentage of the spoils.
But no.
The payout gets distributed pro-rata according to how many songs are in the set, equally for each song, then further divided based on contributing writers.
In the case of Cowboy Carter, the song with the most streaming action has more than 10x the streams of the worst performing song.
Yet the writers who wrote the bigger song get the exact same royalty payout as the writers who wrote the worst performing song.
From this tour, each songwriter earned an average of $105,972 for the entire tour.
Considering that Beyoncé herself cleared at least $100 million before merchandise, brand partnerships, and sponsorships, the disproportion is staggering.
$105k is substantial money, but when you consider that Beyoncé is one of the biggest artists on the planet today, very few artists generate this level of income.
Most songwriters are getting screwed even harder.
The people who create the foundation of every hit song, every breakthrough moment, every career-defining anthem are systematically excluded from the wealth their creativity generates.
This isn't just unfair - it's unsustainable.
You can't build an industry on the backs of creators while excluding them from the profits.
On September 10th in Mexico City, I'm revealing exactly how we're going to change this forever.
How we're going to:
Ensure songwriters get their fair share across ALL revenue streams their talent creates
Weight compensation based on actual impact, not arbitrary equal splits
Make the people who create the magic finally get rewarded like the magic creators they are
You can register for free here:
Free live stream for everyone who registers and 101 chances for artists to be there in person.
The unfair math ends here.
The time to do is now!
Kind Regards
-The Baker
Solving The World's Problems Through Art | #thetimetodoisnow