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Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

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Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#131

Post by NathanKP »

jasode wrote: post #68
NathanKP wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the middlemen and the way the revenue is distributed through them. Someone who produces and uploads their own video that reaches a stupidly huge number of people will make bank guaranteed, just like someone who is reaching their audience directly through Patreon. On average you should be able to get $5-$10 per 1000 YouTube video views if it is on your own monetized channel. So that 35 million views pro…

>On average you should be able to get $5-$10 per 1000 YouTube video views if it is on your own monetized channel. So that 35 million views probably generated around $245,000 dollars for someone. Not disputing your numbers but just putting it out there that Hank Green estimated $2-per-1000.[1] That calculates 35m views to be ~$70k. Google also recently changed its engagement algorithms and everybody's views and moneti…

From what I heard it is/was $5-$10 per 1000 if your video is eligible for the high value video pre-roll ads. If you only get text AdSense ads then it is about $1 per 1000.

Either way, my point is that a 35 million view YouTube video generates a lot more than $200 dollars for someone. Even if you take the minimum of $1 per 1000 you are still looking at $35,000 of ad revenue. That ad money must be going somewhere, even if creators don't get it. So YouTube isn't to blame, its the people who are skimming off so much money that only $200 is left for the writer

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#132

Post by walshemj »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #61
walshemj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this when your being held upside down out of the window over Denmark street (londons tin pan alley)? BTW the father of one reality show host is alledged to have done this to a famous British musician back in the day.

I thought that was Suge Knight's move with Vanilla Ice. Music business can be rough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3zesMAuJrM

Apocryphally it was Don Arden (Sharon Osbourne's Father) did this to Tommy Steel

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#136

Post by _dps »

briholt wrote: post #92
WalterBright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The value of software has been driven literally to $0. Yet I still keep writing software :-)

Me too. But I write it for the web, so I get paid for the massive markup on web servers running the code.

I'm not sure if I'm missing sarcasm here; if I am I apologize.

But... this is obviously not how the world works. In the records and CDs era revenue was proportional to disks shuffled around. It is absolutely not the case that a typical web business has revenue proportional to the number of servers they employ.

The important point here is what economists call "trapping the value" and "pricing power": a CD full of music has lots of value, but the person selling the physical item was at one point the person controlling scarcity, and thus had pricing power, so they trapped most of the value.

Nowadays web business models allow developers to trap the value of their software more effectively. That doesn't mean they are piggybacking on the markup on web servers.

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#137

Post by kelnos »

southphillyman wrote: post #28

My grandfather had a single hit song over 50 years ago and he still lives comfortably off accumulated royalties and other proceeds in 2017. Those days are long gone. In this current system artists can still become millionaires via concert and show money. It's the writers and producers who are getting shafted since they depend mostly on royalities and points. What I find intriguing are the genres where producers are a…

I expect that your grandfather is still an outlier, even back then. It's not like that sort of thing was common 50 years ago. It's still possible today, just unlikely. Maybe more unlikely than it was 50 years ago, but I hardly see that as representative of a huge shift.

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#138

Post by briholt »

_dps wrote: post #136
briholt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. But I write it for the web, so I get paid for the massive markup on web servers running the code.

I'm not sure if I'm missing sarcasm here; if I am I apologize. But... this is obviously not how the world works. In the records and CDs era revenue was proportional to disks shuffled around. It is absolutely not the case that a typical web business has revenue proportional to the number of servers they employ. The important point here is what economists call "trapping the value" and "pricing power": a CD full of musi…

I meant we markup the computing power of the server (not exactly the purchase price). My host rents me a server that can perform X calculations for $Y/hour. I divide and resell that computation power, plus my software, to customers at Z markup.

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#139

Post by Retric »

WalterBright wrote: post #129
Retric wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I would simply be cautious that publicity is not sought out by many communities. Also, people can have significant financial incentives for these places to break apart so communal property may be sold off. PS: I am not personally interested in living on one. However, I do know people who have for ~30 years and see a host of upsides and downsides.

> people can have significant financial incentives Of course. People who believe they will be better off leave the commune. Those tend to be the highest producers. What's left are the low producers, and that can't sustain the commune, so it collapses. The next obvious step is to prevent the high producers from leaving, and history shows how that plays out.

I think you are assuming people make their money inside the community. That's far less efficient than having an outside job and enjoying significantly lower cost of living and a low effort social life. Rent, food, house supplies, utilities, cable etc for ~500-600$/month/person + regular parties etc.

It's often the low producers without significant retirement savings who have larger incentives. ~100k can be a lot of money or almost meaningless very easily.

Re: Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber

#140

Post by kelnos »

comboy wrote: post #107
nfriedly wrote: post #14

Yea... I think the system is rubbish, but I don't really feel very sorry for someone earning $149k from lyrics they wrote 3 years ago. Edit: helped write - per wgj there were 5 authors on that song - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15419567

It's a good amount for the time spent. But you guys need to remember that with creations like this it's probably 1/100 at best when it becomes a hit with that many spins. If you take out prob of already working with somebody really famous that's more like 1 in thousands. So it's like comparing what founder have earned per hour in some unicorn startup. Yes it's not bad, but when you think about EV of the work it doesn…

Sure, but even with those (or worse) odds, I don't think it's that bad. I personally don't think writing a 3-4 minute melody with lyrics to go over it is worth all that much, at least in general. In that 1/100 case where it blows up and you make $150k for that time, I think that should be an exceptional case.

But of course that's just my value system at work: other people might value creative work of that sort much more highly; if a creator can get that person to pay them, great. There's no intrinsic worth or value in a particular instance of creative output; it's just up to how much demand you can create based on how well you can promote/market it.

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