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Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#101

Post by lordnacho »

A lot of people seem to be taking a legalistic or moralistic view on this. Along the lines of "copyright works like this" or "people should get credit for what they do".

The economic view would be something like:

- There's a pie to be split, often beforehand. Some players are in better negotiating positions than others. Sadly, if you don't know a lot of performers, you'll have a hard time getting a bigger slice from the one that shows up.

- It's not actually relevant who is on the document as a "writer". This is simply a thing to be negotiated over so that the performer is incentivized to do the recording. It's the same thing as putting up sales tax on a purchaser of goods, legally the buyer is paying x% extra, but economically the buyer and the seller actually split the bill according to negotiating power.

- What will happen if it's enshrined that only the person who actually wrote the piece gets his name on it? Well there will be other things to bargain over. For instance, maybe you get your name exclusively on the song, but you put it in a company and the performer gets a piece of the company.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#102

Post by nemo44x »

Kaze404 wrote: post #81
blfr wrote: post #50

Are pop songs inherently valuable? Artistically they're not usually interesting but in the market sense, would people listen to them without the massive marketing push? I strongly support distribution of profits in the relation to the value being created. While it is absolutely possible, even commonplace, for organizations to exploit their workers and other smaller orgs, I also suspect that value in "hit" songs is cr…

Why do you not think pop songs are artistically interesting?

It’s all aesthetics to be sure but a lot of pop music doesn’t take risks. Song structures are formulaic as are chord progressions and the notes used for melodies.

How many hit songs use the same I-V-vi-IV progression? It works is why but it isn’t interesting to a discerning listener.

It seems like a lot of pop music is more like fashion than music. Image leads and after removing the stylistic facade you see the same underlying infrastructure. There are exceptions to the rule of course.

Nirvana was an interesting pop music band because many of their songs used weird progressions. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” shouldn’t work according to therory, but it obviously does.

And then of course how pop music is mixed and mastered today. Almost no dynamic range because of the “loudness wars”.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#103

Post by tarsinge »

BurningFrog wrote: post #84

The music business has been massively "democratized" last few decades. Now anyone can record high quality music at home. Anyone can self publish their music for the world to enjoy. Both were unthinkable a few decades ago. But there are still a few gatekeepers, and gatekeepers will usually charge for opening their gate. Why wouldn't they? A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs. Whoever the…

Having the power to bully does not justify bullying. They could negotiate the contract differently. Taking credit for something they didn't do is fraud, no matter how the market tolerates it.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#104

Post by MisterBastahrd »

iams wrote: post #88
S_A_P wrote: post #54

It seems as though this is not a well understood issue from reading the comments here. This isn’t artists doing interviews and saying “I wrote this”. The problem is that the artists are bullying their way into getting points for the song writing credits (publishing royalties) when they had little(change a word in the lyrics) or no input into the song. I fully support artists getting as much of the live performance/me…

It's not like 10% of sales goes to the song writer, so the artist changing a word means that the artist gets and additional 1% and the song writer only 9%. Surely at the point of producing a contract everyone negotiates the split and signs the contract if they are happy with the deal.

Few people are ever happy with a contract. That's why it's a contract in the first place. If everyone were happy, there'd be no need to make breaking the terms of one actionable.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#105

Post by 1980phipsi »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #97
jahnu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performers who don't write or produce their own material are still artists and are as legitimate as any others!

I'd say they are performers not artists. The girl running Photoshop is an artist, the HP LaserJet that prints it out isn't. We don't consider choir members to be artists, but if it's just one voice we assume they are?

Now you're just getting into a war about what art is.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#106

Post by BurningFrog »

tarsinge wrote: post #103
BurningFrog wrote: post #84

The music business has been massively "democratized" last few decades. Now anyone can record high quality music at home. Anyone can self publish their music for the world to enjoy. Both were unthinkable a few decades ago. But there are still a few gatekeepers, and gatekeepers will usually charge for opening their gate. Why wouldn't they? A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs. Whoever the…

Having the power to bully does not justify bullying. They could negotiate the contract differently. Taking credit for something they didn't do is fraud, no matter how the market tolerates it.

Agreeing to share the song writing income is negotiating the contract differently.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#107

Post by mountain_peak »

taylodl wrote: post #69

I wonder if Max Martin or Dr. Luke have these issues? Is it a matter of the larger the stable of artists and hits you have in your portfolio then the more negotiating power you have? I'm just curious, I honestly don't know.

According to "The Song Machine" [0], track-and-hook has largely replaced singer/songwriter for top hits. The book details how Dr. Luke (a very talented guitar player) himself works with a ProTools tech to lay down beats, chord progressions, and instrumentation, then outsources the melodies to "hook writers/topliners" - the working song is sent to ~20 topliners and they aren't compensated whatsoever unless their hook is selected for a song. Also, virtually all the lyrics are outsourced to lyricists, and so on. It's funny that, in turn, the producers themselves seem to outsource much of the songwriting - it's turtles all the way down!

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28789721-the-song-machin...

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#108

Post by mc32 »

antasvara wrote: post #90
skeeter2020 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If they did not write a song they should not be getting paid for songwriting. What does "write the song" mean though? You hear lots of remix and cover versions of famous songs which are obviously derivative works, but what if that happens before the song is ever published? What if a song writer creates a song specifically for an artist? Do these stylistic influences count for writing credit? The line is not well d…

I think the line is pretty well defined. If a songwriter writes a song specifically for an artist, that doesn't indicate any less skill and definitely doesn't mean the artist added anything meaningful. That song could have just as easily (as in the Elvis example) been recorded by another artist. That's akin to saying that I took inspiration from the Harry Potter books, so I should give JK Rowling a cut of my book dea…

It’d be like movie producers taking a cut from film scores or songs because they influenced the score or music.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#110

Post by jrace »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #97
jahnu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performers who don't write or produce their own material are still artists and are as legitimate as any others!

I'd say they are performers not artists. The girl running Photoshop is an artist, the HP LaserJet that prints it out isn't. We don't consider choir members to be artists, but if it's just one voice we assume they are?

The performance is the art. In your analogy printer = PA system.

Who doesn't consider choir members to be artists?

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