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thequicknessinc t1_itc5ebj wrote

It’s even more complicated at the “release an album and get a percentage of sales” part. Been a while since my college music business classes, but labels will generally front the band money to record which is recouped from the album sales first before anyone gets paid- this alone is tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. After that, there are further splits of the revenue between the label, management, PRO’s, and credited writers. Regarding credited writers, the only musicians getting paid are those with writing credits- which often don’t include all members of the band, and in some cases don’t include any members if they didn’t write the song. Frequently, the bassist and drummers and keyboardists of your favorite band are only getting paid through touring and merch sales.

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TFFPrisoner t1_itd36pp wrote

This is why Marillion - pioneers of crowdfunding and having their own label - are now making more money than when they were really famous - the contracts in the 80s were so shitty that they took years to repay the money EMI fronted them.

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obidie t1_itcj28r wrote

Why do you just assume that bassists, drummers and keyboardists aren't songwriters? In all the bands that I was in, the best songwriter out of everyone was a bass player. Come to think of it, isn't that bass player that used to be in the Beatles a pretty decent songwriter? Or Brian Wilson, Larry Graham, Dee Dee Ramone, Stanley Clarke or Lemmy? For songwriting drummers, Don Henley, Phil Collins and Levon Helm, Dave Grohl and Jim Capaldi immediately come to mind and for keyboardists, Christine McVie, Michael McDonald, Elton John, Billy Joel, Warren Zevon, Keith Emerson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bruce Hornsby, Edgar Winter and Gregg Allman got the songwriting taken care of. They got a little bit more than just the proceeds from touring and merch sales.

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thequicknessinc t1_itcqwze wrote

Appreciate you adding these. These are great examples of those that are. You may have misread what I wrote. Frequently, many aren’t given writing credits and so they don’t make any money from record sales. No assumptions made on the nature of their contribution at all.

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FrivolousPositioning t1_itcvdmp wrote

Pearl Jam is a good example too since OP mentioned them in their post. Every member with multiple writing creds or entire songs they wrote themselves.

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