http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34344619/all-about-that-bass-writer-says-he-got-5679-from-178m-streams
To sum up - Kevin Kadish co-wrote 'All About That Bass', which was streamed 178-million times, for which he received a songwriter royalty of $5,679.
Is that fair?
There are two questions here (in addition to the one just above this sentence).
1) How much money did the streaming services receive for sending that song out across the internet that many times?
I don't know. I think we can safely assume that most of the people listening to the song weren't paying anything so it's a question of how much advertising revenue they draw in.
For all we know, the combined revenue for streaming the song that many times was $10,000. In which case that's not such a bad split. If it was $1bn then I agree that Mr Kadish has a compelling case.
Without that figure, his complaint utterly lacks context. He might be right. Or he might want to consider not making his songs available for streaming in order to get a bigger slice of the pie from other sales. (This might lead to a Pyrrhic victory.)
2) How long did it take him to co-write this song?
More contentious.
There was even a famous court-case about this line of reasoning. In 1878, in London, the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel. Ruskin had written that Whistler asking for 200 guineas for his painting "Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket" was "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".
Make your own mind up - it's on the right:
The most famous exchange in the trial went as follows (according to Wikipedia):
Holker: "Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off?"
Whistler: "Oh, I 'knock one off' possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it..." [the painting measures 24 3/4 x 18 3/8 inches]
Holker: "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?"
Whistler: "No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."
If it took Mr Kadish a day to write the song, and he earned $5,679 then, assuming he might work two hundred days per year, that's still an annual salary of around a million dollars. Which isn't bad.
On the other hand, if his combined life experience allowed him to write this song and it is the peak of his career then he should be compensated for all the years he has spent learning to write songs. I'm not sure how we quantify that. Maybe $6,000 to bring his expected annual salary up to $1.2m?
Should anyone be able to expect to write one song and retire, buy a house, etc?
I've written six books (about a year each, since you asked) and haven't got to that stage yet. Why not buy one? I'm not asking for anything like 200 guineas.
3) The third question which wasn't trailed and frankly has no place here (and isn't even a question)
How much was made by Swede Mason for his masterwork 'Masterchef Synesthesia'? It's another that examines aspects of bass.
Admittedly, it's only been streamed 8,782,994 times (as at 9.36am on 1 October 2015). But if Swede Mason hasn't earned more or less precisely $280.22 then someone is being horribly ripped off.
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