How Much Money Can A Song Make

How much money does a hit song really make?

Apparently I have greatly underestimated the potential profits from writing a hit song.
Never thought that you can become a millionaire writing songs..
The-Dream, the R&B singer,songwriter and record producer boasted of a $15 million payday for writing Rihanna's 2007 smash "Umbrella."
Maybe he is exaggerating maybe not.
Any ideas?
How much do songwriters generally get paid for a big hit? Like a Billboard Hot 100 number-one or a top ten hit

Lives for gear

Analogue Mastering's Avatar

Umbrella, he didn't have much work on the drums, that's for sure (logic vintage funk kit 03" loop)

@ Mr.ko the reality is you won't be a millionaire in the Spotify era.

Quote:

Court papers in a recent infringement dispute involving Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, and the estate of Marvin Gaye have revealed that the song "Blurred Lines" earned almost seventeen million dollars in under two years, mainly from radio play, with Thicke and Williams each getting more than five million dollars.

When a track crosses over into Top 10 Pop Radio, ASCAP+BMI counts the spins as double. If it hit number one, they get a quadruple bonus. That explains the million dollar pay outs.

Not to mention they can make a Million easily off Syncs -anytime you hear a song in a Commercial or Movie Trailer - they might have gotten $20k-200k payout depending on how big the client is. (Most Number one hits get dozens of syncs)

And If the Artist is on your label? Good lord. MikeWill started EarDrummers and signed Rae Sremmurd, so he gets a cut of the master, check out this article where he's dropping hints about his economic success.

How Mike Will Made It | The New Yorker

Quote:

"When I started shooting videos, I had to pay ten thousand dollars just to rent one. I was like, 'I do all these music videos, and I still don't own a red camera? So I spent about a hundred thousand dollars to buy one. My own bread. Boom! We can go shoot a movie right now. Why not? We're just using the utensils at hand."
We walked up Wilshire Boulevard to the Fairmont Hotel, where Will had been staying.

Quote:

The S63, Mike Will's ride when he's in Atlanta, is a top-of-the-line white Mercedes sedan with gold-colored rims and massage seats.

Quote:

Will watched Beyoncé's performance of his song on the Super Bowl halftime show at Iovine's place in L.A. with Jimmy and his friends. "I ain't gonna lie," he said. "I was with four billionaires watching the TV.

(And keep in mind this article came out a full year before "Black Beatles" & "Humble" came out, which were his first number ones - when this article was written most of MikeWill's productions didn't get past Urban Radio)

Awesome set of interviews with Anthony Ray!! He co-wrote Pussycat Dolls "don't Cha" with Cee-Lo Green, and more recently "Anaconda" with Nicki Minaj and Jamal "Polow" Jones. Pretty fascinating guy - he's been based out of Seattle, WA his whole career, which is a very unusual place to make Pop Music - he truly did it his own way. He confirms that, over his 30 year career he's earned over $100M off one of his tracks.

Yeah there's millions upon millions up at the top, if you can write a "timeless" song like Umbrella (and note that not every Rihanna #1 is as big as that song) then yeah 15 million is probably just his share, with millions more made off it by others too.

Falls off quick though . . I squeaked one in at #36 once that I had 50% publishing on, and it made me a few hundred grand, mostly from syncs due to the accessibility of the hook. Others that only hit the #30s , without the same level of syncability, may not even make a writer 10k.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boombapdame ➡️

@ Mr.ko the reality is you won't be a millionaire in the Spotify era.

Songs still get played on radio and TV, and that is where a lot of income originates - I'm still getting royalties for airplay on a very minor hit I co-wrote 20 years ago - albeit, not very much these days, but as I said, it was a very minor hit - with a major hit, you can definitely generate millions in airplay.

Airplay income, for a writer, almost always far outstrips mechanicals (in which I include downloads and streams).

Not to mention syncs (which I won't, as the poster above has). There's also a writers royalty for live performances.

[Note: I'm speaking from a UK perspective here - not sure if everything I've said holds true everywhere]

Lives for gear

Owen L T's Avatar

Quote:

Originally Posted by lauren1975 ➡️

"It behooves me to earn that capital back"?! Awesome quote.

20 year old Dieuson Octave recently posted a video of the car he bought his mother, as well as a home in Los Angeles. "Bodak Yellow" (his co-write with Cardi B) put an end to Taylor Swift's reign 2 months ago.

A surprising fact is that Octave was already a millionaire before this - "Tunnel Vision" (which he wrote by himself) hit # 6 in March.

Tunnel Vision by Kodak Black | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Another wildly successful songwriter is 22 year old Khalif Brown - like Octave, he owns a Rolls Royce Wraith. "Formation" (his co-write with Beyonce Knowles) was his first top 10, and later that year "Black Beatles" topped the charts for 6 weeks straight.

2017 was also a very productive year - "Unforgettable" (which he toplined) reached # 3.

Like most hit songs - "Unforgettable" translates beautifully acoustically - check out this AMAZING guitar rendition:

Asking how much money you can make from
songwriting is like asking how long is a
piece of string.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boombapdame ➡️

the reality is you won't be a millionaire in the Spotify era.

Umbrella plays on Spotify to date: 154,799,848
Spotify's average rate of pay per play for top artists: $0.008

= $1,238,398

Umbrella will profit indefinitely on Spotify as opposed to point of purchase CDs or MP3s

I want my next hit to fund my descendants' college ed 50 yrs from now. ha!

Nearly 20 years ago Moby raked in the cash when he licensed his hits for ads

but he openly regretted it after he got raked over the coals for it and said he'd never do it again. I wonder if that's still true

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave.R ➡️

Nearly 20 years ago Moby raked in the cash when he licensed his hits for ads

but he openly regretted it after he got raked over the coals for it and said he'd never do it again. I wonder if that's still true

Curious the source? Never heard this, and he's still syncing his records. That mentality is loooong gone from musician culture as a whole in my experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave.R ➡️

Umbrella plays on Spotify to date: 154,799,848
Spotify's average rate of pay per play for top artists: $0.008

= $1,238,398

Umbrella will profit indefinitely on Spotify as opposed to point of purchase CDs or MP3s

I want my next hit to fund my descendants' college ed 50 yrs from now. ha!

Interesting point I'd never considered. The streaming model does indeed allow for a new level of indefinite profit. I wonder if it actually proves more beneficial in the long run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by newguy1 ➡️

Curious the source? Never heard this, and he's still syncing his records. That mentality is loooong gone from musician culture as a whole in my experience.

i heard it from Moby himself. i'm trying to remember, but all i come up with is some TV docu-series. on PBS?

you can hear Extreme Ways at the end of the Bourne movies

as i said, i wonder if it's still true for him, in regard to ads, that is

Quote:

Originally Posted by newguy1 ➡️

The streaming model does indeed allow for a new level of indefinite profit. I wonder if it actually proves more beneficial in the long run.

yeah, consider Taylor Swift's love/hate for streaming. her 50 Shades contribution, I Don't Wanna Live Forever, currently has nearly 627 million plays on Spotify. That's over $5 million for just one song. (i'd like to know what that song has earned from CD/mp3 sales)

good thing she changed her mind cuz it's just stupid to leave that on the table

Mmmmm..... some Mexicans making a lot of money.. ....Nice....

So my son is a die hard Chainsmokers fan, and has both of their EPs and LP.

When thumbing through the liner notes, I noticed Alex & Andrew own a whopping 8 different companies:

Chainsmokers, Inc
Chainsmokers Touring, LLC
Chainsmokers Merchandising, LLC
Nice Hair Publishing LLC
Smile and Nod, LLC
Born N Raised, LLC
Kick the Habit Productions, Inc.
Our Thing, LLC

Just goes to show you how many different revenue streams there truly are!

Also, here's an interview with Matthew "BlackBear" Musto. He confirms that his work on Justin Bieber "Boyfriend" indeed made him a millionaire:

blackbear Explains How a Near-Death Experience Helped Make His Most Successful Album | Billboard

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noisewagon ➡️

Mmmmm..... some Mexicans making a lot of money.. ....Nice....

Huh? Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee are both Puerto Rican (if you're talking about Despacito). Also, Bruno Mars is Hawaiian-American. Not sure if you're comment is an inside joke...

Lives for gear

BlackBackDrop's Avatar

The money is there the difficulty is getting a part of it.

You may have studied the secrets "Mixing With Your Mind" and figured them out all and have the best tracks the world is waiting to buy sitting on your HDrive.

But who is going to hear them to get them out?

It's a who you know business and I'm one lonely MF!

YNWA

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackBackDrop ➡️

The money is there the difficulty is getting a part of it.

You may have studied the secrets "Mixing With Your Mind" and figured them out all and have the best tracks the world is waiting to buy sitting on your HDrive.

But who is going to hear them to get them out?

It's a who you know business and I'm one lonely MF!

YNWA

Put a brand together that targets a smaller scene where the barrier of entry isn't as steep and where labels/DJs are listening to unsolocited material because they themselves get cool points for discovering something new that's quality. If your ideas and production are both relevant and above-par (the two necessary qualifiers for breaking through), you'll get releases on smaller labels, guaranteed. As you stack these up, your value and leverage within the scene will rise and you'll end up "solicited" and thus able to make bigger moves in bigger scenes with people paying attention.

Lives for gear

b0se's Avatar

Interesting thread! Congrats to the guys/girls who have done so well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0se ➡️

Interesting thread! Congrats to the guys/girls who have done so well.

yeah, sounds great! unfortunately, most of it is misinformed nonsensical hype broken calculator bs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tgriff ➡️

yeah, sounds great! unfortunately, most of it is misinformed nonsensical hype bs.

I get the criticism, but not the one where someone in this thread is crying over using a drumloop, not from other song but from a drum plugin. It's more how you process it anyways than what the source is. Little sonic nuances and good taste to pick up the right drum/loop for the right song. We now have thousands of them on hard-drives, with different tunings.

Or should we erase the 90's cause of the sampling used too much and not enough "work".Let's kill the drum machines as well, not enough work. Superior drummer should be obviously called superlazy drummer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by souljahh ➡️

WITAF are you going on aboot?

edit: oh now I see the comment you are referring to.

yeah dunno... these days there are soooo many cheesy arse sample "companies" churning out these (obviously unsignable) construction kits, presets, over processed loops and rehashed x infinity one shots etc... catering to the lazy, untalented, hobbyists and funk fakers.. personally I make my own samples or pay to have them made if im after a rare or odd instrument, sound, vocal etc . I mean if I am putting a bunch of time and money into a project, its gonna be full on and all out and drums are NOT the place to skimp or hurry up on especially with electronic music. if its just an 808 one shot or whatever obviously rinsed to death and pointless to reinvent the wheel. .. but if youre gonna use an obvious loop sample, it better be one helluva tune you made or be really funny in some way, twisted to hell and back etc.. otherwise youre fooling yourself if you think anyone in the industry will take you seriously.

IMO

Quote:

Originally Posted by tgriff ➡️

WITAF are you going on aboot?

edit: oh now I see the comment you are referring to.

IMO

Honestly if you're this threatened by loops you're probably fooling yourself too. . .

Quote:

Originally Posted by newguy1 ➡️

Honestly if you're this threatened by loops you're probably fooling yourself too. . .

"honestly" I make music for myself first and foremost. think about that for a minute and then tell me I am wrong or "threatened by loops". "honestly" I find the whole sample industry to be quite amusing. I work at all levels of the industry and have witnessed firsthand label heads, a&r guys djs etc. laughing at submissions from "producers" using this sorta self defeating crap. but hey keep using those 10000x reprocessed vengeance samples that were sampled from mp3s that were originally taped from vinyl and keep submitting to labels etc.... I am all for doing whatever floats your boat man. take my advice or leave it. end of the day if others enjoy and pay me for my music great, if they dont thats fine too. either way im good

Quote:

Originally Posted by tgriff ➡️

That's my point. The paint-by-numbers users aren't going to go anywhere. So it makes no sense for a "real" musician to pay that whole thing any mind at all.

Professional painters don't whine about paint-by-numbers kits. . . because its something else entirely that holds no relevance to them and doesn't compete with them at all. They don't even register, its stuff for hobbiests who want to have fun. If certain hobbiests can pass off paint-by-numbers stuff at small craft shows for small money, the talented professional painter does not care.

I say you're "fooling yourself" if you're upset about paint-by-numbers, because the very fact that you're concerned with them at all means you're probably sitting lower than you think you are.

Not meaning this towards you personally, but the general "you." When I hear someone whining about loops, my knee-jerk assumption is they're not all that good at what they do lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by newguy1 ➡️

That's my point. The paint-by-numbers users aren't going to go anywhere. So it makes no sense for a "real" musician to pay that whole thing any mind at all.

I say you're "fooling yourself" if you're upset about paint-by-numbers, because the very fact that you're concerned with them at all means you're probably sitting lower than you think you are.

Not meaning this towards you personally, but the general "you." When I hear someone whining about loops, my knee-jerk assumption is they're not all that good at what they do lol.

um.. ok. well, it wasnt me who brought up using loops in the first place was it. anyway. my comments were aimed squarely at the dung being slung around in this thread. like I said, its amusing.. watching thick people run around like little sheep ignoring advice, wasting time, emotion and money on nonsense, chasing shortcuts to rainbows for the pot of gold.. whatever. hey by all means, paint away!

oh and btw youre (and by you, I do mean YOU) flat out wrong about professional painters and that whole industry... some of, if not THE most condescending narcissistic whiny little hipster fartsy beeyotches youll ever come across in this world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tgriff ➡️

um.. ok. well, it wasnt me who brought up using loops in the first place was it. anyway. my comments were aimed squarely at the dung being slung around in this thread.

It was entirely you that brought up using loops (or presets, or construction kits, etc) in this thread, the discussion had absolutely nothing to do with that, making your comment very odd.

You're clearly hyper-focused on others using loops for it to even be brought up here, which is a value-lowering look in general. As a generous heads up from me to you. You're welcome