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

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

#131

Post by dehrmann » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

I always thought the artists make token edits to the songs so they can keep up the charade of writing their own songs for marketing reasons.

Someone told me "Taylor Swift writes her own songs." Sure, but when you look at the songwriters on 1989, over half of them were at least co-written by the song writer with the most #1 hits after McCartney and Lennon.

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

#132

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

iams wrote: post #82

hristov wrote: post #12

This unfortunately has been a long used tactic in the music world. In the old times it was sharpie producers putting their names as writers for songs of poor black artists, so they (the producers) can get royalties in addition to their usual fees. Now it is the singers taking advantage of the songwriters and composers. It is all evil but it kind of shows who has the negotiation leverage. Todays pop music scene is all…

> putting their names as writers for songs of poor black artists, so they (the producers) can get royalties Why do you need to be a writer to get royalties. Would the producers not be able to ask for a royalty regardless?

Record producers are not entitled to royalties unless they have songwriting, composer, or performance credits on a song. Essentially, they're the guys who bring everyone together and make sure a song comes out at the end.

Many record producers do participate in the songwriting or composition process and are credited for that work (for example, Jay-Z), but the vast majority don't (for example, Glen Wallachs, co-founder of Capital Records).

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

#133

Post by exactlysolved » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #94

croutonwagon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labels have been cooking the books and running dirty schemes since forever. Hell even Pink Floyd wrote a song about it. I would not be shocked in the slightest if a few artists are increasingly also starting to throw their weight around and that is gaining some traction and becoming more of a norm as well. Thats also not new, ranging from the inane (no brown m&m's back stage) to stuff like this. I think a lot of peop…

The m&m's story might be misrepresented here. The true story is that they had extremely complicated rigging for their stage show. By putting the M&M's into the contract (a canary of sorts) they were able to ensure that it was read. Otherwise they knew immediately there could be problems. https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9

Is this really the true story?

I see that claim a lot and it's obviously a nice story. But isn't it quite likely that they were just acting like obnoxious rock stars, and they made up the story later when they didn't like being legendary for being assholes anymore? Or are we just taking their word for it?

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

#134

Post by pumaontheprowl » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #68

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…

I'm not an IP lawyer, but I have a handful of patents. As a patent lawyer explained to me, the list of inventors on a patent should be strictly based on whether somebody actually invented something or not. It's not like an academic paper, where everybody on the team gets to be an "author." In my view the same thing should apply to songwriting. The current standard is, you wrote a song if you wrote the melody or the w…

If you do that, then performers will just exert their power in other ways (by reducing royalties for song-writers).

Fundamentally, this is happening because the quality of the song-writing isn't really all that important to the success of a pop star. Marketing, production quality, and sex appeal are more important. It's really not that hard to write a 4-chord song about breaking up with your boyfriend.

If song-writers think they should be getting rich off these popular songs, there is nothing stopping them from performing the song themselves. They don't do that though because they know they'll make more money letting Taylor Swift sing it.

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

#135

Post by tolbish » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #118

aantix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This parallels my entire experience with comp-sci and "group" projects.

My favorite was in grad school -- six weeks into a final project, the professor emailed us "we noticed one of your assigned group member's name was missing from the project mid-term report". We were all like huh? What 5th group member? This person was assigned to our random group at week 0 and had never bother to even introduce himself in five weeks! Free rider galore.

Well now I'm curious. How was the situation resolved?

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

#136

Post by harrisonjackson » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #124

HiroshiSan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a huge fan of blackpink I highly recommend you check out the documentary they have on Netflix. It became obvious after watching it that the genius behind blackpink is Teddy Park, who was also behind another massively successful girl group 2NE1. I've thought about it slightly and without Teddy Park there is no blackpink, but without the individual members each bringing their own flavour to the group, there is no bl…

Katy Perry found success as a songwriter before she found success as a singer, and has written songs for Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Selena Gomez, and Nikki Minaj, among others. ( https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/katy-perry-wr... ) Most of her own songs are co-written in studio with her collaborators on the song (meaning the feat artist and the producers), with each collaborator pitching in or more…

I think they mean "Katy Perry" and "Ariana Grande" are fictional characters as the public knows them. They are characters played by two artists and supported by media/storytelling.

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

#137

Post by adam0c » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

here's an idea, why don't they stop writing songs for all these fuck tard talentless factory "pop" stars?

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

#138

Post by godshatter » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #31

jaywalk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be a revenue stream without the performers?

Would there be a revenue stream without something to perform?

I don't have an opinion on the ethics of this one way or the other, but the pop stars should be responding by asking why the songwriters signed the particular contract they are complaining about in the first place if they felt so strongly about this.

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

#139

Post by exactlysolved » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #101

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…

This seems like a reductive view which is based on ignorance of how songwriting royalties work.

Songwriting credit is copyright in the music and lyrics of the song. Artist credit is copyright in a specific recording of a song.

So if you write a song which is a great song, and Arianna Grande records a lackluster version which nobody likes that much, but then several other artists pick up on the fact that it's a great song and record their own highly successful versions, then the songwriter would do very well from this, but Arianna Grande wouldn't share in the later success of the cover versions.

If Arianna gets a 30% writers credit just for putting her own 'vibe' on the original recording, then she participates in the upside of the cover versions, even though they might have been successful despite her rather than because of her.

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

#140

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #131

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…

I always thought the artists make token edits to the songs so they can keep up the charade of writing their own songs for marketing reasons. Someone told me "Taylor Swift writes her own songs." Sure, but when you look at the songwriters on 1989, over half of them were at least co-written by the song writer with the most #1 hits after McCartney and Lennon.

I looked this up and while some of her older hits were just credited to her, a really impressive number of them were co-written by Liz Rose, who I’ve never even heard of.