At my internship this past summer, I got an interesting inside look at the publishing world. Someone in the office made a joke that the company ran entirely on the royalties it made off of one extremely popular piece. When I inquired into this, I learned that in the music business, royalties must be paid (to the artist/composer/publisher/recording company, etc.) every time a song (or part of a song) is used in a commercial setting. This included commercials, web advertisements, soundtracks, public performances – you name it. This idea was supported by Goldstein’s comment that “copyright is about money” (Goldstein 4). Goldstein also discusses the concept of royalties when he mentions compulsory licenses, which legally force artists who cover another artist’s song to pay $0.08 for each recording of the cover (Goldstein 15).
This article offers an example of a company, Kobalt Music Group, that focuses on delivering royalty payments to artists. Kobalt acknowledges that the digital age has made tracking the royalties due to artists more difficult, but also understands that royalties are a large portion of artists’ revenue.
That last part intrigues me – are royalties a large portion of artists’ revenue? That makes it seem that they do not make enough money selling their own stuff. Although, it does make sense. In this internet age, it is more likely for people to want to cover and parody a song than actually buy it for personal recreational use.
This is very true. Think about the radio and how much they have to pay just to play a song. Think about commercials who use other artists’ songs. All of these entities must pay royalties to the “owner’ of the song, and there is a lot of money in that business.