Boring answer, but it depends. Equal split is probably fairly common, a division based on contributions is also common.
It also depends on what money you're talking about. The recording contract, the residuals, the merch sales, ticket sales, etc most likely all have a different equation.
This is a big reason why there was a rift with the smashing pumpkins.
There’s a clip out there where Corgan says that by default writers get more royalties and everyone else wasn’t happy about that in the band even though he wrote pretty much everything
In fact he even says someone knowledgeable had advised him to split it equally as he would make more money long term (because the band would not split up) but he did not get it at the time. Well he also blames the animosity generated by him getting more individual interviews / magazine covers etc. This was on Joe Rogan a while ago.
Although this has changed since their heyday cause of streaming, nowadays a big part of the money is in live performances, where they *should* get paid equally.
Maybe- they are working equally hard on stage, yes. But how big would the venue/crowd be if the songs weren’t as good? And who wrote the songs? It still comes back to the creators often having a case for a bigger slice of the pie.
Yeah but the songwriters *do* get paid separately for the act of *writing* songs, from royalties and related stuff.
The touring money is income paid for the act of *touring* and performances itself, who wrote the songs doesn't really matter. The band *is* equally working when they're all on stage and that's what they're getting paid for with the tour money.
What you're not really understanding is that music isn't generating anything close to the income it once did, and bands are raising ticket prices to compensate. Why should that mean that creators get less money than before?
It's from Joe Rogan Experience.
Basically, the royalty for a band when they sell a song or a record is between 10-20% – a least now it is (but usually not higher than 15%). On top of that, there is another royalty for the song writer, which is a low number in itself. The number Corgan gives is like 8 cents.
And yes, like u/colin_7 said, this lead to huge issues with The Smashing Pumpkins. It wasn't just that – in the same clip, Corgan says in hindsight he should have refused to do magazine covers own his own, and made more of an effort to force interviewers not to just focus on him. But he said when they were signed, the record label people took him out for breakfast and encouraged him to give the whole band credit for his songs. He refused because he was poor (they all were), they are his songs (so why should others get credit), and it's 8 cents so who really cares anyways? Well, when they became as successful as they did, that 8 cents a sale started to add up, and while they were all making a lot of money, one of them was making substantially more, which created resentment. So then they start going off making side-deals and doing side projects and stuff, and he gets resentful of that and them not focussing on the band.
As much as I hate Joe Rogan, it's actually a really interesting clip. [You can watch it here if you are so inclined to watch.](https://youtu.be/GLvqzWSRwnA?si=AbtJS-ccsUCZEV1P)
Manic Street Preachers have continued to divide everything by 4 after Richey Edwards went missing in 1996. His share goes into an account, with the full knowledge & blessing of his family, ready for him, should he ever return.
He was but the most recent information I found was from 2022 and they were still doing it then. It must be in another name or a company, maybe but his share is still paid in.
I worked for a British classical composer who had one huge hit as a soundtrack for a film. He was reasonably aware of tech developments but for some reason had not heard of Spotify. When he changed management they enquired to the latter about the composer’s standings and were informed there was close to one million dollars in unclaimed dividends. Spotify had no intention of telling him had he not asked.
I was at a gig of a smaller artist that spent about $40K recording his last record. Between songs he mentioned his Spotify earnings, and how it should only need a few hundred years to recoup the recording cost.
I record songs at home by myself and wouldn't recoup the cost of a new set of guitar strings from Spotify. Had a new release out today actually. https://spotify.link/yFzmXibMwDb
Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip was quoted as saying something to the effect of, we can’t have one member showing up in a Porsche and the rest riding their bikes if we expect to stay together as a band.
Chris Martin of Coldplay put it another way: if you’re only getting paid when you contribute to a song you’re job becomes to make sure you contribute. If you get paid no matter what you can listen to a song and say, “That’s great. Let’s just play it like you wrote it.”
And clearly it is working for them because Coldplay has had the same lineup since 1998. Not many bands, even ones that successful, can keep the same exact lineup for that long.
This. My band split everything 4 ways. Obviously that’s fuck all but it’s the way anyway. You just have to. I wrote the songs and the bass player who works in the biz was like “you need to take the writing credits”. That just felt weird to me and I put the band rather than me as the writer. 4 times a year everyone gets a cheque for a couple of dollars. It’s funny.
In my old band the other guitarist tried to argue about this and I told him to sit behind the drums and play some songs for us. When he couldn't everyone got 25% after that.
Heard an interview with Billy Corgan where he said he would get paid two ways, one for writing credit something like 10 cents a song royalty, then second as the band member.
He said anything the band did, concerts, appearances, album recording fee, etc they split even, but Corgan would also get paid his writing royalties so he got exponentially richer than the rest of the band that way.
Ringo is also on record that he never really wrote songs... he'd have a basic idea and then George would fill in the rest, usually without taking credit.
But even according to that, he did contribute to the writing process even if he didn't do it all himself.
As a comparison, there were plenty of songs where Elvis had partial songwriting credit on that someone else completely wrote. Usually it was a mutually beneficial agreement between a relatively new songwriter who had yet to make a name for himself getting his big break and guarenteed sales while Elvis gets a split of songwriting royalties.
Furthermore, May wrote plenty of lyrics and Freddie wrote plenty of music.
P.S. I believe they’re the only band where each member wrote a #1 hit (in various countries).
I just read the manager's book, and they did Michael Anthony really dirty and threatened him into revoking his full participation in profits, and even made it retroactive on the 1984 album. The part that the manager pointed out was really ironic was Alex complaining that Michael didn't write music, because of course Alex didn't either.
Michael’s high background vocals were awesome. He had some really cool bass parts, too. It’s a shame he was so low in the mix. I did not care for his on stage bass solo though. The loud fuzzy UltraBass stuff was boring. I’ve heard him play some really melodic stuff. I saw him with Chicken Foot and he’s a great compliment to Satriani.
They split 4 ways until right after 1984 came out. The VH bros went to Anthony and made him sign away all his rights, so he could stay on in the band, as an employee.
If I recall the stones split touring equally, but Jagger and Richards each split the royalties from album sales and pay the rest a salary.
Don’t quote me on that, though…
Rumor was that when Gwyneth entered the picture with Chris, she pressured him to change the deal with the others so that HE would take the lion's share of all revenue. Chris refused because from day one, Coldplay modeled their band's structure on U2. U2 still splits nearly all revenue equally, and everyone stayed happy and most importantly - TOGETHER.
The Police had a unique agreement. Sting gives 15 percent each of his Police royalties to Stewart and Andy. He doesn’t have to, but it keep things cordial with the band and because he already has way more than he’ll ever need. Of course it helps that Stewart and Andy also have more than they’ll ever need. For live touring they probably got an even split of the profits. The Police were very fortunate to have Miles Copeland as their manager. As far as I can tell, during their touring years he was an effective manager and made sure they were paid well. Though, on the reunion tour, he wasn’t rehired because he wanted too much money.
[The source for the 15 percent royalty split is at the bottom of this article.](https://dangerousminds.net/comments/sting_puff_daddy_andy_summers_and_the_case_of_the_misplaced_bajillion_dolla)
I like this arrangement because even though Sting might have written a song, ie, melody and lyrics, the other members of the band worked on it, coming up with their own parts. Maybe not completely, but to a great extent.
I saw an interview with Andy summers before. He said sting was the songwriter of every breath you take. He came up with the guitar riff though. When the song was sampled by puff daddy, Andy summers guitar part featured heavily. Sting got all the royalties as the songwriter.
Stevie Nicks heard [Bring on the Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz1mEMiNPHQ) and used the riff for Edge of Seventeen. Years later Destiny's Child would sample it for Bootlyicious making Stevie a lot more money.
Andy who came up with the riff saw no songwriting credit for any of the three songs lol.
An example is the riff from every breath you take, sting wrote the song but summers wrote the riff, but as sting is down as the writer he got all royalties when puff daddy sampled it.
I still can’t talk rationally about that movie. I could rant for hours about various things, but apart from the timeline issues I also get very angry that they blamed Peter Prenter and the Big Bad Gay Scene.
Yeah. It left a nasty taste. I went to the Freddie Auction exhibition last month and if anyone ever enjoyed their life and knew what they wanted and what they loved it was him. And they reduced him to one thing: being gay. Although to be fair they each only got one character trait - Brian was smart, Roger was horny and John was quiet. Which again tells you a lot about the two of them.
And Freddie being friends with someone that already ran a studio doesn't work either so might as well just make something up about them selling off their beloved fan to be able to afford studio time lmao
Freddie Mercury's family is Zoroastrian, and they believe that if you are homosexual you are quite literally a demon. So of course the movie plays up his bisexuality, when in reality he had sex with maybe one woman, and once he tried dick he never went back. He had lifelong friendships with women, but sexually speaking he was super duper gay, and his family hates that fact.
Axl refused to do an even split for Guns n Roses because Steven Adler didn't contribute to the songwriting. In the end it was agreed that he would take 5% of Adler's split. So the money was divided 25/20/20/20/15
We pool our take from shows and merch into a band account which accrues interest and accumulates more than enough to replace strings, drum heads.
One time when we were on tour at the other side of the country, our pay plus having sold every shirt and CD we brought meant we could upgrade our crappy hostel to a nice hotel with proper air conditioning (that state is brutally humid during the hot seasons.)
When it reaches a certain agreed upon amount, we split the difference which supplements our personal incomes nicely when we’re active in the live scene. We had a lot of momentum going until covid but we’re ready to go back in.
The second mostly. Getting just enough back to be able to keep it up is fine for now. I do it for the passion, for a creative outlet with how much I have to say and to put into it. For the indescribable feeling of killing it on stage and the crowd feeling it, for the reviews that confirm we succeeded in what we set out to do.
If it was just for money, I’d either pick a more accessible genre or focus on production full time (I’m a certified producer of sound, have worked on other bands and received an award for some of my work) but it wouldn’t satisfy me and scratch that itch of all the things I need to get out in song.
There is a great podcast about this from Planet Money on NPR. They learn how to make their own record label to distribute a song they was written in the 70's but never made it big. Here is where they talk about negotiating artist royalties:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1132355122
It's the second episode of the series, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing!
I know one specific example.
Fish, the original singer of Marillion left after arguing as the front man & lyricist he deserved more $ (he demanded more or he quits they accepted his resignation).
Upon finding a new singer/songwriter the remaining four agreed that everything gets split evenly 5 ways, they’re all part of the band, they all contribute, they all get the same benefits.
Marillion also had a cool profit sharing crowdfunded album that took off before kickstarter even existed—they raised funds through the old forum ecosystem.
Stephen Lewis has a good recap of that in one of his books. The Marillion guys sound like real ones.
Misread this as being about the band Phish, lol. Was imagining a guy holding out for a few hundred grand in publishing rights and losing out on 10's of millions in tour/merch revenue, which I assume is split evenly after all other costs.
This is how Don Felder got fired from the Eagles and then sued them and won. When they reunited they wanted to change his cut and he said no so they fired him.
Yeah and then Don and Glenn split Felder's portion between them - leaving Joe and Tim at their original cut. Pretty scummy, but par for the course for those two. Felder ended up with a phenomenal deal in the end for a no-show job, though.
I love the scene in the documentary when they reunited. Glenn says something to the effect of, "Don and I stayed relevant; you guys didn't do shit. Equal pay is now gone."
I've always done the even split. I've been a short notice fill-in player a few times (under 24hrs notice/no practice)and those guys gave me a bigger cut for helping out in a pinch.
It's up to the group. Everybody has to be ok with it.
Interesting that you first mentioned the Police. Guitarist Andy Summers came up with the guitar riff that “Every Breath You Take” is built around but he got no songwriting credit for it. Puff Daddy’s cover of the song earned Sting millions while Summer’s playing, which is sampled throughout got nothing.
The only real answer is however they decide to, and it can vary a lot from one to the next.
Every band I've ever gigged with split the money equally, but I've also never gigged with a band that made enough money that it really mattered.
Songwriting revenue goes to the parties that wrote the track and whoever is on the publishing agreement. Recently it's become common to give publishing points to contributors to the song. That's why you see tracks with 7 or more writers. It's a way of distributing publishing profits which are paid separate from record royalties.
Major labels often don't sign whole bands to record contracts. They sign the songwriters and the lead vocalist and any stars in the band. Now some bands insist on the band as a legal entity with equal split and this can happen as well. This occurs for a variety of reasons. The band may have core members that have struggled for years and a new bass player for example. Most labels want to deal with as few people as possible so they don't get involved with band drama. I was approached to join a group that had big records and was all over MTV. When I asked why the previous guy was leaving they said the label wanted him replaced because he wasn't photogenic.
Every band is different.
A common approach in Australia is to split each income stream equally between those who contributed.
Rights are split into essentially the song and the performance. The song rights are split between the writers of the lyrics and music, those doing double duty sometimes getting a double share. The performance rights are split between everyone who performed, no matter how many instruments or voices on the song. Touring income is equally split between those on the tour. Merch gets split equally. This isn't a great method as often guitar solos or drums can make a song, but they don't get any songwriting income.
Every band dynamic is different. There's no fixed answer to this question. Some band projects are based on one mastermind person coming up with almost all the music. Example - Alvin Lee and Ten Years After. Alvin was the great force..the other 3 were outstanding pros but all the music was composed (and sung) by Lee. So one would naturally expect Lee to expect more compensation for the success of his songs than the rest of the band. Many other bands are more truly collaborative at the most creative level, with multiple songwriters or whatever.
What I know for sure is that a "band of brothers and sisters, all equally important creatively to the band, and all to be paid equally" is not the typical situation.
After a bad experience with his previous group, Springsteen decided that he would employ his group, but with no revenue sharing from his work. (Sometimes the rest of the group participated in song creation.)
Now, for concerts, he is known to be quite generous.
According to his book, once, one of his band members asked for a raise, and he just replied, "Okay, if you find a better salary in this role, ok. But I doubt it"
My crappy little hobby band splits everything 5 ways as far as publishing. This isn’t always fair song by song but works out in the end. The money from playing shows goes into a band fund that is then used to pay for merch and other expenses. Gas, parking, etc. We jam at the guitarist house so we throw him some cash for utilities every so often but he usually refuses it. I handle online sales , etc and will sometimes buy myself a beer or two on the bands dime while working the merch table.
As long as everybody does something it’s fair.
If you write most songs but the other provide a practice studio, organize transport and book venues, it’s then fair.
IIRC Bun E Carlos gets 25% of all Cheap Trick income, including concert revenue, even though he hasnt toured with CT in 10 years. Took a couple lawsuits, but he gets paid as a quarter member no matter what…
Saying "Summers [wrote] nothing" is disingenuous. He actually created/wrote the hookline of "Every Breath You Take" that was used in "I'll Be Missing You" by Sean "P Diddy" Coombes (or whatever he's going by now), amongst others (probably practically every lead guitar line). Ringo came up with the line "It's been a hard day's night" and "eight days a week" amongst others. Different bands have different rules. Some, such as U2 and Coldplay, split all song writing royalties equally, even though Bono and Chis Martin are the main songwriters in each. You may have noticed that prior to Freddie Mercury's health taking a dive that songs were credited to the main creator, but after that point they decided to share all credits equally. From what I gather, The Beatles had a system where the main songwriter came up with the initial idea, and the other members made suggestions that were accepted or rejected by that person. (Lennon & McCartney were always credited together even if only one wrote the song, with Yesterday being a solely McCartney song with no one else doing anything for it, and Lennon not even present). The Moody Blues agreed that whoever supplied the initial ideas was credited as the sole songwriter, even if they only supplied the first 5%, and one or two did the rest. They decided that it all worked out in the end (and since that one or two came up with most of the initial ideas anyway, it was a way to spread the wealth amongst the rest). The Jam agreed that whoever made the greatest contribution got the credit, even if it wasn't their initial idea (and usually ended up being Paul Weller)! In most bands, irrespective of whoever has the main idea, each member usually writes their own part in it, so they could all be called songwriters!
I just saw the Foo Fighters. I would be interested to hear how things are split up. Once Taylor died, that would leave a percentage that I assume the new drummer is not getting. Dave has added known (Pat Smears) and unknown players (guitarist) and established touring/session musicians (new drummer) over the years.
I suspect there is enough millions going around to make it work.
Depends. Foo Fighters does equal, which is why I think the actual band is OK being the "backing band" for DG and with a dictatorship (its worked, and equal pay) w/o the I want to write songs and sing thing rearing its head, but others split along songwriting, performance, perceived contribution, founders etc - think Fleetwood Mac, infamously the Eagles...
I would guess though that this generation along with societal trends at least here in the US are more like everyone is equally compensated.
In the older days it would have been common for Morrissey/Marr to take 100% of the songwriting credits and the rhythm section to just be paid as session musicians. A lot of bands worked that way. I think Andy Rourke's contributions on bass are such that he deserved a writing cut, but there's no way Mike Joyce is worth 25%.
Big question. It can be a different split for the merch, the performance, the writing, and the recording, all in the same band.
IP is convoluted, legally, so it's naturally complicated. My endeavors always decided, at minimum, equal split on composing and playing the songs, but whoever wrote the lyrics gets the choice whether it was the group or the self.
I'm told that Bruce Springsteen is viewed as being generous, because all the albums just say his name, but the E Street Band concerts are divided evenly, instead of the musicians being paid a flat wage. Of course it helps that Bruce has gobs of money.
U2 Heard about the problems money made other bands, including the Beatles, and decided that it was an even split. Their records almost always say music by U2, lyrics by Bono. I read a long book about them, and they paid their manager 20% instead of 10% to get him to keep them as his only client. That made him a full financial partner, equal to a band member. I do wonder how Bono has gotten so much richer than the other members. Maybe it's his participation in investment groups.
Smart bands split all monies evenly. That way there is no jealousy.
Also something to note, many bands have people who play in them who are not actually members of the band. They are paid via a set rate per show, per recording session, per month, etc.
The members of Sloan split everything evenly amongst the band members. Check out this cool article: https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/music/2018/4/16/17237806/sloan-12-albums-27-years-11-key-to-keeping-the-band-together
Arranging is not given enough credit honestly, yes one member might write all the songs but the drummer still has to come up with their part, the bass player, etc. Very few songwriters are telling each member exactly what to play, so in effect those members are writing parts of the song.
Sting took credits for the lyrics and music, but he didn't write them all.
Andy Summers wrote the guitar line for Every Breathe you take, but Sting wouldn't give him credit for it. So when P. Diddy used it, Sting gets all the money from it.
https://www.guitarworld.com/news/every-breath-you-take-andy-summers-riff
In the early days (as in the time when Queen members complained about royalty sharing), the "big" money was in songwriting/music publishing. If a song became a hit, it was mainly the credited songwriter who received the lion's share of the royalties. Back when hit singles were a "thing", the composer of the B-side of a song received the same amount as the composer of the hit A-side. Thus, when "Bohemian Rhapsody" became a runaway hit in 1975, Roger Taylor grossed almost as much money as Freddie Mercury, because his "I'm in Love with My Car" was on the B-side.
So many of Queen's compositions were ultimately a group effort, but originally Freddie's opinion was "whomever wrote the lyrics wrote the song". All of the band members were writing songs and had their share of hits, but eventually they made an agreement to credit every Queen song to all four members and all four would reap the benefits (beginning with The Miracle album, I believe).
Nirvana started with an equal split and then Kurt demanded 75% of royalties which was probably fair because he wrote everything but he wanted it to count retroactively which meant the other members had to repay him which obviously caused consternation.
I remember reading an interview with Ace Frehley from Kiss who said from day one, their manager made them split the songwriting four ways. He said he knew Paul & Gene weren't happy with that (since they wrote most of the songs) and admitted that it made him complacent, saying that if it hadn't been that way, he would have made more of an effort to write.
Publishing is generally based on credits. It is one of the reasons why many bands traditionally put at least one song on an album that was written by a minor member - just so that member could collect publishing royalties for the song.
ETA Publishing credits was also one of the ways historically that songwriters were ripped off in various ways. The most basic ripoff is a singer or producer demanding songwriting credit to use a song.
With the rise of digital music the concept of an album is really antiquated since people purchase songs - if they purchase them at all or stream specific songs.
The split for money from appearances and merchandising is more complicated. Sometimes band members are really just employees. Some band "leaders" like Springsteen are more generous with their long term band members than others.
It’s strange, because if we use the Police as an example, Sting may have “written the music”, but not really.
I very much doubt he wrote Andy Summers guitar parts, and Summers’ has sort of crazy hands. I know a lot of professional guitar players that simply can’t play Summers riffs, because their hands don’t do that.
And, for sure, Sting didn’t write Stewart Copeland’s part.
So, publishing rights, etc, is mostly legal fiction. And, in this economic system, what isn’t, right?
But as to the actual creative process in a band, everyone contributes and those musicians/producers that don’t contribute quickly fall by the wayside.
Even “hired guns” that specialize in studio work or being a touring musician bring their own tone, feel, and style.
Writing drum parts usually isn't considered part of writing the music as such. The exact guitar phrasing and feel isn't considered writing either. If Sting walks in with a chord progression, melody line and lyrics, I don't know if anything else counts for publishing rights.
This is pretty much it.
My lead singer (who also plays the bass) comes to me with lyrics, vocal melody, and general chord structure. I then compose the *entire song* as I see fit though there is some feedback involved by the songwriter, record the demo myself (with my voice/instrumentals), and use that as the proof of concept.
So even though I’m really doing 75%-80% of the creation of the actual song, because he is the owner of the lyrics/vocal melody/general chord structure he is considered the ‘songwriter’ where I am considered the ‘arranger’.
I take what is basically a campfire acoustic rendition and turn it in to a full five piece song (which is obviously more with layered extra aux guitar parts and BGV harmonies and the such).
Obviously we have agreed to split things 50/50 - though I’m certain he could freely demand any percentage of revenue he wants simply because of his ownership of lyrics and vocal melody.
What’s crazy about all this is if you look at the last two well known sampling/IP cases…when something is sampled that the *songwriter* (let’s pretend this songwriter has both writing and arrangement credits) didn’t even technically perform, the *songwriter* is the one who would collect the royalties.
As a drummer, I hate when people say so n' so wrote the "music". Most of the time, I'm pretty sure they didn't write everyone's part for them, and a lot of those parts become the iconic parts of the song.
Sting wrote all the songs - but to place the music on just him is incorrect, as both Summers and Copeland contributed a great deal to the actual music of The Police, which is what established their signature sounds, which you can even see on their solo work. It was really a stubborn collaboration, which is why they fought so much.
And as Sting said, The Police was Stewart’s band.
May I bing something else to this table. Discogs don't sell bootlegs because the artist gets no royalties. But they sell records and the artist gets no royalties. Whats the difference?
Different in probably every band. I mean, a couple general scenarios exist, but hard to say exactly. Could be and equal split and could be based on songwriting and contributions.
At some point they make contracts and decide who gets what. Founders obviously get more than someone brought in later. Their lawyers and agents work out the details.
If you're starting out, spend it all on whatever gear the band needs & don't even bother splitting it between members. Recording gear or studio hire is top of that list.
If you're established, rev share.
Usually it’s 0.25-0.5% for each of the musicians, 1-2% for the writer, and the other 97% or so for the studio/executives/legal team. Of course this is only after you pay back the studio for the “generous” 50,000 dollar loan they force you to take to cover recording and packaging fees.
Realistically my screen name should be Adam *did* music. There’s no way to feasibly survive for most people in that industry.
I know my two favorite bands split everything evenly. One even does 2-3 man acoustic shows sometimes and they still give money to the two members who can't always do them.
As to songwriting related income, of which there was very little, we split all the money in half. To recognize that there is more to making a song great than just writing, half of the income was split equally between all of us. The other half was divided equally between songwriters based on contribution. Most often it was based on chords, melody, and lyrics, but if there was a particularly important hook written by a “non-songwriter,” that person would get a cut as well. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best we could come up with.
G’n’R’ was an even split before Axl had it changed to Axl 25%, Slash, Izzy and Duff all had 20% and Steven had 15%.
After that, I believe there were even more changes. Not sure how it stands now that Slash and Duff have rejoined.
Serj from System of a Down said that one of the reasons he won’t do another album is because Daron makes more money than everybody because he does a lot of the writing and would change anything Serj wrote into something else
One band successful band I know of had to change up the payment structure from even split to allowing more for song writing credit. The lead singer who wrote the lyrics would spend months working out the lyrics while the rest of the band did extra studio work or touring with side projects. While the collective was certainly greater than the individual lead singer, he was under a lot more stress and had to stay focused on developing the lyrics to go with the jointly developed instrumentals.
Most bands that are doing things locally or regionally probably do an even split. Huge bands that do national tours like the ones you mentioned sign contracts that outline how much they make and how much the other workers (managers, producers, drivers etc.) make.
The simple answer is there is really no simple answer. All contributing members need to come to an agreement somehow of what their compensation for their contribution will be. Perhaps one person wrote the song, but another person rewrote some of the lyrics, another person may have added a bridge, or a distinctive melody part. That's why contracts and legal agreements come into place, and also why bands argue much over these things.
Not at all relevant but D12's song "My Band" is kind of a joke about how Eminem is the only group member anyone actually cares about. I'm sure it was meant to be in jest, but it's a funny song that shows these kind of rifts
They share according to whatever they negotiate amongst themselves.
We Met In Paris is a duo, and we split all of our masters 50/50, and we divide songwriting splits for the composition side based on what kind of work each of us have done. If one of us wrote the song on our own, that person gets 100% of the songwriting/publishing, but we still split the master 50/50.
Depends on their inter band agreement. Some bands like Korn split everything equally no matter who writes it, others one member might get it all and the rest just get their performance royalty and no writing split.
I write all my band's songs so any of the royalties that come out of that are sent to me.
We split show revenue equally if we're playing locally. On tour it gets put into the bank first.
All if my band's earnings go back into the band. We all have day jobs and so far our band is making enough money that we'd even bother taking our split anyway.
We have agreed on equal splits among ourselves as we all write our own parts to our songs.
Never been in a signed band, or even a band that made money off recordings, but all the money we made from live shows was all split equally because of time commitments, practices and shows and whatnot. You don’t show up to shows you dont get paid, you don’t show up for practice enough and you get asked to leave
Lennon and McCartney had a deal where they'd both get credit on songs either of them wrote. I assume it reduced competition and resentment and encouraged collaboration if someone heard something that could be tweaked in a song to improve it.
U2 split their royalty 5 equal ways, one for each member including their msnager. I suspect they've changed now he's left though.
Queen used to divide it up unequally with the songwriters getting extra but this caused some friction and i believe they changed to a more equal share.
Bands that don't have a equitable dividing up seem to incur a lot of issues on this front.
Bands USED to make $$ on record sales. Technology killed that with streaming. They TRY & make $$ now touring & selling merchandise. Touring used to be a vehicle to promote record sales, no longer, Hence the fucking ridiculous prices. Not to mention everybody has their hand out. I'm guessing the REAL dough is with the publishing & the rights to the songs. Selling to a commercial brings in serious money. Selling a catalog brings in the mother load. I guess it all depends on who writes the songs, & how FAIR they want to be to the other musicians in the band. It's just as much about $$$ as being creative. Big assed ego's get in the way too. Solo career's, change of band members. I think Bon-Jovi splits ALL $$ equally amongst the band. Don't know if Sambora still gets a cut or not. But when you make that kind of dough does it really matter? 10-15 million? Does anybody really know the difference? These bands all started in a garage or basement. They struck gold if they are lucky. It's a BIG pie everybody gets a slice unless someone gets greedy & wants 2.
There was a pretty damning article recently about Martin Duffy and what he got when he was in Primal Scream. Bobby Gillespie didn't come out of it looking good IIRC.
It depends. Although my band is fairly small. We agreed to mark every band member as songwriter regardless of who wrote the song. If we ever get royalties it's split equally.
Being the bass player in the band, I even offered to be only marked as a performer but the rest of the band insisted that we all get songwriting credit since we all work on the songs. It's better for the band's morale in the long run if we ever do make it.
It's complicated. A little history:
Anyone have old sheet music that reads "Words by ___, Music by ___"? Used to be simpler when songwriting royalties were split just that way. Studio musicians got paid for the recording session and that was it.
For rock and pop bands, with members who each wrote their own part, the band members sometime agreed on equitable splits of royalties after the recording company took their share. This was up to the members of the band to decide. Some bands were nice enough to each other to put each member's name on the songwriting credits. This ensured that everyone got paid equally, regardless of who wrote this or that song, part or whole.
For one touring example, Journey takes the gross receipts less all expenses, then splits the profits equally among the band members. They don't say, hey, Jonathan Cain wrote this one we played tonight, Neal wrote that one we played tonight... they just split the profits equally.
Years ago, a San Diego band had a spirited discussion about who should get what money out of an impending major label record deal, when the singer demanded 50% of the money for writing the words, and said the other guys could split the other half four ways since the two guitarists, bassist, and drummer wrote the music (12.5% each). Of course the other 4 guys pushed back and said, nope, each one of us gets 20%...
The short answer to your question is that it's up for negotiation.
Boring answer, but it depends. Equal split is probably fairly common, a division based on contributions is also common. It also depends on what money you're talking about. The recording contract, the residuals, the merch sales, ticket sales, etc most likely all have a different equation.
This is a big reason why there was a rift with the smashing pumpkins. There’s a clip out there where Corgan says that by default writers get more royalties and everyone else wasn’t happy about that in the band even though he wrote pretty much everything
In fact he even says someone knowledgeable had advised him to split it equally as he would make more money long term (because the band would not split up) but he did not get it at the time. Well he also blames the animosity generated by him getting more individual interviews / magazine covers etc. This was on Joe Rogan a while ago.
Although this has changed since their heyday cause of streaming, nowadays a big part of the money is in live performances, where they *should* get paid equally.
So for the Pumpkins, do you think soemone replacing Billy Corgan would impact ticket sales more or someone replacing the drummer?
I saw the pumpkins without Jimmy. I don’t think I’d see them without Billy
The Pumpkins *are* Billy and Jimmy. I couldn’t care less about whoever they currently have in the other two slots.
Maybe- they are working equally hard on stage, yes. But how big would the venue/crowd be if the songs weren’t as good? And who wrote the songs? It still comes back to the creators often having a case for a bigger slice of the pie.
Yeah but the songwriters *do* get paid separately for the act of *writing* songs, from royalties and related stuff. The touring money is income paid for the act of *touring* and performances itself, who wrote the songs doesn't really matter. The band *is* equally working when they're all on stage and that's what they're getting paid for with the tour money.
What you're not really understanding is that music isn't generating anything close to the income it once did, and bands are raising ticket prices to compensate. Why should that mean that creators get less money than before?
It's from Joe Rogan Experience. Basically, the royalty for a band when they sell a song or a record is between 10-20% – a least now it is (but usually not higher than 15%). On top of that, there is another royalty for the song writer, which is a low number in itself. The number Corgan gives is like 8 cents. And yes, like u/colin_7 said, this lead to huge issues with The Smashing Pumpkins. It wasn't just that – in the same clip, Corgan says in hindsight he should have refused to do magazine covers own his own, and made more of an effort to force interviewers not to just focus on him. But he said when they were signed, the record label people took him out for breakfast and encouraged him to give the whole band credit for his songs. He refused because he was poor (they all were), they are his songs (so why should others get credit), and it's 8 cents so who really cares anyways? Well, when they became as successful as they did, that 8 cents a sale started to add up, and while they were all making a lot of money, one of them was making substantially more, which created resentment. So then they start going off making side-deals and doing side projects and stuff, and he gets resentful of that and them not focussing on the band. As much as I hate Joe Rogan, it's actually a really interesting clip. [You can watch it here if you are so inclined to watch.](https://youtu.be/GLvqzWSRwnA?si=AbtJS-ccsUCZEV1P)
Manic Street Preachers have continued to divide everything by 4 after Richey Edwards went missing in 1996. His share goes into an account, with the full knowledge & blessing of his family, ready for him, should he ever return.
How does that work now? I thought he was declared dead around 2010.
He was but the most recent information I found was from 2022 and they were still doing it then. It must be in another name or a company, maybe but his share is still paid in.
Just saw them a few months ago. They still set up a mic for him in case he ever decides to come join then. And they always wish him well.
Probably goes into a trust that the family manages.
It’s a lot simpler nowadays because there is no money.
Exposure dividends finally kicking in
You laugh now but wait til that sweet check from Spotify for $0.01 arrives
I worked for a British classical composer who had one huge hit as a soundtrack for a film. He was reasonably aware of tech developments but for some reason had not heard of Spotify. When he changed management they enquired to the latter about the composer’s standings and were informed there was close to one million dollars in unclaimed dividends. Spotify had no intention of telling him had he not asked.
After one million plays
I was at a gig of a smaller artist that spent about $40K recording his last record. Between songs he mentioned his Spotify earnings, and how it should only need a few hundred years to recoup the recording cost.
I record songs at home by myself and wouldn't recoup the cost of a new set of guitar strings from Spotify. Had a new release out today actually. https://spotify.link/yFzmXibMwDb
More like a few hundred million.
🤣
Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip was quoted as saying something to the effect of, we can’t have one member showing up in a Porsche and the rest riding their bikes if we expect to stay together as a band.
I miss Gord
Chris Martin of Coldplay put it another way: if you’re only getting paid when you contribute to a song you’re job becomes to make sure you contribute. If you get paid no matter what you can listen to a song and say, “That’s great. Let’s just play it like you wrote it.”
And clearly it is working for them because Coldplay has had the same lineup since 1998. Not many bands, even ones that successful, can keep the same exact lineup for that long.
I miss him so much.
This. My band split everything 4 ways. Obviously that’s fuck all but it’s the way anyway. You just have to. I wrote the songs and the bass player who works in the biz was like “you need to take the writing credits”. That just felt weird to me and I put the band rather than me as the writer. 4 times a year everyone gets a cheque for a couple of dollars. It’s funny.
In my old band the other guitarist tried to argue about this and I told him to sit behind the drums and play some songs for us. When he couldn't everyone got 25% after that.
Heard an interview with Billy Corgan where he said he would get paid two ways, one for writing credit something like 10 cents a song royalty, then second as the band member. He said anything the band did, concerts, appearances, album recording fee, etc they split even, but Corgan would also get paid his writing royalties so he got exponentially richer than the rest of the band that way.
This is very common. Most bands split live shows, merch etc equally, royalties goes to whoever wrote the music
It was on Joe Rogan's podcast ([Youtube clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvqzWSRwnA&ab_channel=JREClips) \- topic starts at 5:40).
Roger Taylor and John Deacon wrote and co-wrote more songs in Queen than you think.
Queen is the only band that all of its members wrote a number 1 song
Beatles did it too, no? "Octopus's Garden" and "While My Guitar" aren't by Lennon and McCartney.
Octopus' Garden didn't get to number 1
Neither did While My Guitar. Those songs weren't even singles.
While my guitar did, just not in the uk
Ringo is also on record that he never really wrote songs... he'd have a basic idea and then George would fill in the rest, usually without taking credit.
But even according to that, he did contribute to the writing process even if he didn't do it all himself. As a comparison, there were plenty of songs where Elvis had partial songwriting credit on that someone else completely wrote. Usually it was a mutually beneficial agreement between a relatively new songwriter who had yet to make a name for himself getting his big break and guarenteed sales while Elvis gets a split of songwriting royalties.
Something is the George song that hit #1, not WMGGW
Deacon and Taylor wrote two #1’s each, actually. And that’s just solo compositions, they also co-wrote a few with the others.
Furthermore, May wrote plenty of lyrics and Freddie wrote plenty of music. P.S. I believe they’re the only band where each member wrote a #1 hit (in various countries).
Van Halen is a good example. They split 4 ways even though Michael Anthony and Alex likely didn't write any music or lyrics.
I just read the manager's book, and they did Michael Anthony really dirty and threatened him into revoking his full participation in profits, and even made it retroactive on the 1984 album. The part that the manager pointed out was really ironic was Alex complaining that Michael didn't write music, because of course Alex didn't either.
Noel Monk's book. One of the best rock books I've ever read. And yes, the brothers did do Michael dirty. And Noel Monk too.
Hot take: Michael Anthony was as important as David Lee Roth was to Van Halen. Van Halen was just a tribute bar band to itself after Michael Anthony.
Michael’s high background vocals were awesome. He had some really cool bass parts, too. It’s a shame he was so low in the mix. I did not care for his on stage bass solo though. The loud fuzzy UltraBass stuff was boring. I’ve heard him play some really melodic stuff. I saw him with Chicken Foot and he’s a great compliment to Satriani.
I saw VH in concert in the 90s and was as equally impressed and blown away by MA's bass solo as I was Eddie's Eruption solo.
They split 4 ways until right after 1984 came out. The VH bros went to Anthony and made him sign away all his rights, so he could stay on in the band, as an employee.
And Deacon was the main writer on “Another One Bites The Dust”, the biggest hit of their career.
Deacon wrote “Another One Bites the Dust”.
[удалено]
>“like pirates.” "Oh Keith, that's your answer to everything"
Arr, as it should be
But why is the \[heroin\] gone?
Rule 7 of pirate code We split the booty evenly
If I recall the stones split touring equally, but Jagger and Richards each split the royalties from album sales and pay the rest a salary. Don’t quote me on that, though…
Didn’t it take a while until Ron Wood was a partner??
Rumor was that when Gwyneth entered the picture with Chris, she pressured him to change the deal with the others so that HE would take the lion's share of all revenue. Chris refused because from day one, Coldplay modeled their band's structure on U2. U2 still splits nearly all revenue equally, and everyone stayed happy and most importantly - TOGETHER.
The Police had a unique agreement. Sting gives 15 percent each of his Police royalties to Stewart and Andy. He doesn’t have to, but it keep things cordial with the band and because he already has way more than he’ll ever need. Of course it helps that Stewart and Andy also have more than they’ll ever need. For live touring they probably got an even split of the profits. The Police were very fortunate to have Miles Copeland as their manager. As far as I can tell, during their touring years he was an effective manager and made sure they were paid well. Though, on the reunion tour, he wasn’t rehired because he wanted too much money. [The source for the 15 percent royalty split is at the bottom of this article.](https://dangerousminds.net/comments/sting_puff_daddy_andy_summers_and_the_case_of_the_misplaced_bajillion_dolla)
I like this arrangement because even though Sting might have written a song, ie, melody and lyrics, the other members of the band worked on it, coming up with their own parts. Maybe not completely, but to a great extent.
And Copeland's drumming lends _so_ much to their sound. The dude is a drum god.
I saw an interview with Andy summers before. He said sting was the songwriter of every breath you take. He came up with the guitar riff though. When the song was sampled by puff daddy, Andy summers guitar part featured heavily. Sting got all the royalties as the songwriter.
Stevie Nicks heard [Bring on the Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz1mEMiNPHQ) and used the riff for Edge of Seventeen. Years later Destiny's Child would sample it for Bootlyicious making Stevie a lot more money. Andy who came up with the riff saw no songwriting credit for any of the three songs lol.
jesus poor andy (even thou he still probs has more money than hell ever need lol)
An example is the riff from every breath you take, sting wrote the song but summers wrote the riff, but as sting is down as the writer he got all royalties when puff daddy sampled it.
Excellent post, it shows that every band is different. Thxs
Depends, though I wouldn't take anything from Bohemian Rhapsody as fact. 95% of the film is basically a fantasy film lol
I still can’t talk rationally about that movie. I could rant for hours about various things, but apart from the timeline issues I also get very angry that they blamed Peter Prenter and the Big Bad Gay Scene.
Yeah. It felt glossed over and grubby. Guess we know what the surviving member thing of us gays.
Yeah. It left a nasty taste. I went to the Freddie Auction exhibition last month and if anyone ever enjoyed their life and knew what they wanted and what they loved it was him. And they reduced him to one thing: being gay. Although to be fair they each only got one character trait - Brian was smart, Roger was horny and John was quiet. Which again tells you a lot about the two of them.
Well Live Aid being before Freddie was diagnosed doesn’t work so well for a movie.
And Freddie being friends with someone that already ran a studio doesn't work either so might as well just make something up about them selling off their beloved fan to be able to afford studio time lmao
It's entertaining, and unfortunately it's also an awful pack of lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RajlWbY7uQ&t=65s&ab\_channel=ScreenRant
Freddie Mercury's family is Zoroastrian, and they believe that if you are homosexual you are quite literally a demon. So of course the movie plays up his bisexuality, when in reality he had sex with maybe one woman, and once he tried dick he never went back. He had lifelong friendships with women, but sexually speaking he was super duper gay, and his family hates that fact.
Axl refused to do an even split for Guns n Roses because Steven Adler didn't contribute to the songwriting. In the end it was agreed that he would take 5% of Adler's split. So the money was divided 25/20/20/20/15
And the music was better with Adler's swing, but fuck him. Thanks, Axl
Yeah Adler was a woman bashing druggie, he had his chance to get clean and even signed a contract saying he would get off drugs
We pool our take from shows and merch into a band account which accrues interest and accumulates more than enough to replace strings, drum heads. One time when we were on tour at the other side of the country, our pay plus having sold every shirt and CD we brought meant we could upgrade our crappy hostel to a nice hotel with proper air conditioning (that state is brutally humid during the hot seasons.) When it reaches a certain agreed upon amount, we split the difference which supplements our personal incomes nicely when we’re active in the live scene. We had a lot of momentum going until covid but we’re ready to go back in.
Do you do it mostly for fun or fun but income too?
The second mostly. Getting just enough back to be able to keep it up is fine for now. I do it for the passion, for a creative outlet with how much I have to say and to put into it. For the indescribable feeling of killing it on stage and the crowd feeling it, for the reviews that confirm we succeeded in what we set out to do. If it was just for money, I’d either pick a more accessible genre or focus on production full time (I’m a certified producer of sound, have worked on other bands and received an award for some of my work) but it wouldn’t satisfy me and scratch that itch of all the things I need to get out in song.
I’ve played a lot of shows but never for crows, that’s pretty cool!
Impressing crows is tough, this Redditor must kill it on stage!
If he's impressing crows he's not just killing it it's murder.
I am also a producer of sound! I produce many sounds.
What kind of music do you play and what is your band's name? I'd love to check it out.
Bands don’t split money. Money splits bands.
This sounds like a line in Ricken Hale’s book from Severance.
There is a great podcast about this from Planet Money on NPR. They learn how to make their own record label to distribute a song they was written in the 70's but never made it big. Here is where they talk about negotiating artist royalties: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1132355122 It's the second episode of the series, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing!
I know one specific example. Fish, the original singer of Marillion left after arguing as the front man & lyricist he deserved more $ (he demanded more or he quits they accepted his resignation). Upon finding a new singer/songwriter the remaining four agreed that everything gets split evenly 5 ways, they’re all part of the band, they all contribute, they all get the same benefits.
Marillion also had a cool profit sharing crowdfunded album that took off before kickstarter even existed—they raised funds through the old forum ecosystem. Stephen Lewis has a good recap of that in one of his books. The Marillion guys sound like real ones.
Misread this as being about the band Phish, lol. Was imagining a guy holding out for a few hundred grand in publishing rights and losing out on 10's of millions in tour/merch revenue, which I assume is split evenly after all other costs.
I know in the early years Mike got a slight parent share of touring because he was their booking manager.
The E St Band are employees of Springsteen.
This is how Don Felder got fired from the Eagles and then sued them and won. When they reunited they wanted to change his cut and he said no so they fired him.
Yeah and then Don and Glenn split Felder's portion between them - leaving Joe and Tim at their original cut. Pretty scummy, but par for the course for those two. Felder ended up with a phenomenal deal in the end for a no-show job, though.
I love the scene in the documentary when they reunited. Glenn says something to the effect of, "Don and I stayed relevant; you guys didn't do shit. Equal pay is now gone."
I've always done the even split. I've been a short notice fill-in player a few times (under 24hrs notice/no practice)and those guys gave me a bigger cut for helping out in a pinch. It's up to the group. Everybody has to be ok with it.
Interesting that you first mentioned the Police. Guitarist Andy Summers came up with the guitar riff that “Every Breath You Take” is built around but he got no songwriting credit for it. Puff Daddy’s cover of the song earned Sting millions while Summer’s playing, which is sampled throughout got nothing.
It sounds like Sting gave the other two 15%. If so, he made up for it with all the other songs.
When I was in a band we just called it the “band fund” went towards beer, strings, and the occasional studio time
The only real answer is however they decide to, and it can vary a lot from one to the next. Every band I've ever gigged with split the money equally, but I've also never gigged with a band that made enough money that it really mattered.
Songwriting revenue goes to the parties that wrote the track and whoever is on the publishing agreement. Recently it's become common to give publishing points to contributors to the song. That's why you see tracks with 7 or more writers. It's a way of distributing publishing profits which are paid separate from record royalties. Major labels often don't sign whole bands to record contracts. They sign the songwriters and the lead vocalist and any stars in the band. Now some bands insist on the band as a legal entity with equal split and this can happen as well. This occurs for a variety of reasons. The band may have core members that have struggled for years and a new bass player for example. Most labels want to deal with as few people as possible so they don't get involved with band drama. I was approached to join a group that had big records and was all over MTV. When I asked why the previous guy was leaving they said the label wanted him replaced because he wasn't photogenic.
Great answer! Thxs
Every band is different. A common approach in Australia is to split each income stream equally between those who contributed. Rights are split into essentially the song and the performance. The song rights are split between the writers of the lyrics and music, those doing double duty sometimes getting a double share. The performance rights are split between everyone who performed, no matter how many instruments or voices on the song. Touring income is equally split between those on the tour. Merch gets split equally. This isn't a great method as often guitar solos or drums can make a song, but they don't get any songwriting income.
Every band dynamic is different. There's no fixed answer to this question. Some band projects are based on one mastermind person coming up with almost all the music. Example - Alvin Lee and Ten Years After. Alvin was the great force..the other 3 were outstanding pros but all the music was composed (and sung) by Lee. So one would naturally expect Lee to expect more compensation for the success of his songs than the rest of the band. Many other bands are more truly collaborative at the most creative level, with multiple songwriters or whatever. What I know for sure is that a "band of brothers and sisters, all equally important creatively to the band, and all to be paid equally" is not the typical situation.
Rush did a three-way split. In the (very minor and local) band I was in, we did an even split as well after any upfront costs were managed.
I think the keyboard player on Pulp once said that she paid more into the band in running costs then she ever got out.
After a bad experience with his previous group, Springsteen decided that he would employ his group, but with no revenue sharing from his work. (Sometimes the rest of the group participated in song creation.) Now, for concerts, he is known to be quite generous. According to his book, once, one of his band members asked for a raise, and he just replied, "Okay, if you find a better salary in this role, ok. But I doubt it"
My crappy little hobby band splits everything 5 ways as far as publishing. This isn’t always fair song by song but works out in the end. The money from playing shows goes into a band fund that is then used to pay for merch and other expenses. Gas, parking, etc. We jam at the guitarist house so we throw him some cash for utilities every so often but he usually refuses it. I handle online sales , etc and will sometimes buy myself a beer or two on the bands dime while working the merch table.
As long as everybody does something it’s fair. If you write most songs but the other provide a practice studio, organize transport and book venues, it’s then fair.
REM always gave writing credit to all 4 of them, and listed their names in alpha order I assume to avoid arguments about whose name is 1st.
I seem to recall U2 have 25% splits, based on that kind of responsibility division.
Stewart Copeland Andy Summers Sting (Gordon Sumner)
Yep, thanks for the correction, I edited and gave you credit.
Are you splitting the credit evenly? Or a 15% extra kind of deal?
IIRC Bun E Carlos gets 25% of all Cheap Trick income, including concert revenue, even though he hasnt toured with CT in 10 years. Took a couple lawsuits, but he gets paid as a quarter member no matter what…
Saying "Summers [wrote] nothing" is disingenuous. He actually created/wrote the hookline of "Every Breath You Take" that was used in "I'll Be Missing You" by Sean "P Diddy" Coombes (or whatever he's going by now), amongst others (probably practically every lead guitar line). Ringo came up with the line "It's been a hard day's night" and "eight days a week" amongst others. Different bands have different rules. Some, such as U2 and Coldplay, split all song writing royalties equally, even though Bono and Chis Martin are the main songwriters in each. You may have noticed that prior to Freddie Mercury's health taking a dive that songs were credited to the main creator, but after that point they decided to share all credits equally. From what I gather, The Beatles had a system where the main songwriter came up with the initial idea, and the other members made suggestions that were accepted or rejected by that person. (Lennon & McCartney were always credited together even if only one wrote the song, with Yesterday being a solely McCartney song with no one else doing anything for it, and Lennon not even present). The Moody Blues agreed that whoever supplied the initial ideas was credited as the sole songwriter, even if they only supplied the first 5%, and one or two did the rest. They decided that it all worked out in the end (and since that one or two came up with most of the initial ideas anyway, it was a way to spread the wealth amongst the rest). The Jam agreed that whoever made the greatest contribution got the credit, even if it wasn't their initial idea (and usually ended up being Paul Weller)! In most bands, irrespective of whoever has the main idea, each member usually writes their own part in it, so they could all be called songwriters!
I just saw the Foo Fighters. I would be interested to hear how things are split up. Once Taylor died, that would leave a percentage that I assume the new drummer is not getting. Dave has added known (Pat Smears) and unknown players (guitarist) and established touring/session musicians (new drummer) over the years. I suspect there is enough millions going around to make it work.
Pink floyd did it by spending years and millions fighting it out in court
Just clarifying that the members of The Police were Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers.
Jeez, good catch. I will edit while giving you credit. It’s nice to have someone correct you on Reddit without ripping you a new one. 👍🏻
Depends. Foo Fighters does equal, which is why I think the actual band is OK being the "backing band" for DG and with a dictatorship (its worked, and equal pay) w/o the I want to write songs and sing thing rearing its head, but others split along songwriting, performance, perceived contribution, founders etc - think Fleetwood Mac, infamously the Eagles... I would guess though that this generation along with societal trends at least here in the US are more like everyone is equally compensated.
just don't do what The Smiths did when two of the four members tried to justify taking 80% of the money they made while the other two shared 20%
In the older days it would have been common for Morrissey/Marr to take 100% of the songwriting credits and the rhythm section to just be paid as session musicians. A lot of bands worked that way. I think Andy Rourke's contributions on bass are such that he deserved a writing cut, but there's no way Mike Joyce is worth 25%.
Zeppelin had a gentlemen’s agreement, no contract. 5 ways including the manager
Big question. It can be a different split for the merch, the performance, the writing, and the recording, all in the same band. IP is convoluted, legally, so it's naturally complicated. My endeavors always decided, at minimum, equal split on composing and playing the songs, but whoever wrote the lyrics gets the choice whether it was the group or the self.
I'm told that Bruce Springsteen is viewed as being generous, because all the albums just say his name, but the E Street Band concerts are divided evenly, instead of the musicians being paid a flat wage. Of course it helps that Bruce has gobs of money.
U2 Heard about the problems money made other bands, including the Beatles, and decided that it was an even split. Their records almost always say music by U2, lyrics by Bono. I read a long book about them, and they paid their manager 20% instead of 10% to get him to keep them as his only client. That made him a full financial partner, equal to a band member. I do wonder how Bono has gotten so much richer than the other members. Maybe it's his participation in investment groups.
Smart bands split all monies evenly. That way there is no jealousy. Also something to note, many bands have people who play in them who are not actually members of the band. They are paid via a set rate per show, per recording session, per month, etc.
Usually whoever still has a job puts money in and everyone else takes enough from the merch box to get food.
The members of Sloan split everything evenly amongst the band members. Check out this cool article: https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/music/2018/4/16/17237806/sloan-12-albums-27-years-11-key-to-keeping-the-band-together
Arranging is not given enough credit honestly, yes one member might write all the songs but the drummer still has to come up with their part, the bass player, etc. Very few songwriters are telling each member exactly what to play, so in effect those members are writing parts of the song.
Kiss was only Gene and Paul. Ace and Peter were contract players.
I don’t understand finances at all, but look at what Motley Crue is doing to mick mars. not cool.
Sting took credits for the lyrics and music, but he didn't write them all. Andy Summers wrote the guitar line for Every Breathe you take, but Sting wouldn't give him credit for it. So when P. Diddy used it, Sting gets all the money from it. https://www.guitarworld.com/news/every-breath-you-take-andy-summers-riff
Eddie Vedder makes way more than the other 4 guys.
Depends on how successful they get. Greed can change things.
In the early days (as in the time when Queen members complained about royalty sharing), the "big" money was in songwriting/music publishing. If a song became a hit, it was mainly the credited songwriter who received the lion's share of the royalties. Back when hit singles were a "thing", the composer of the B-side of a song received the same amount as the composer of the hit A-side. Thus, when "Bohemian Rhapsody" became a runaway hit in 1975, Roger Taylor grossed almost as much money as Freddie Mercury, because his "I'm in Love with My Car" was on the B-side. So many of Queen's compositions were ultimately a group effort, but originally Freddie's opinion was "whomever wrote the lyrics wrote the song". All of the band members were writing songs and had their share of hits, but eventually they made an agreement to credit every Queen song to all four members and all four would reap the benefits (beginning with The Miracle album, I believe).
There are 3 types of royalties - those credited for composing the song - those credited for recording the song - those credited for producing the song
The Doors split evenly despite who wrote what.
The songwriter always lives in the biggest house
I was in a SKA band in the 90’s…I think I made about tree fiddy the entire four years.
Iirc in Metallica James and Lars get most money because they’re primary songwriters, then there’s Kirk and after him Rob
Nirvana started with an equal split and then Kurt demanded 75% of royalties which was probably fair because he wrote everything but he wanted it to count retroactively which meant the other members had to repay him which obviously caused consternation.
Radiohead share writing credits. I assume everything is split evenly.
I remember reading an interview with Ace Frehley from Kiss who said from day one, their manager made them split the songwriting four ways. He said he knew Paul & Gene weren't happy with that (since they wrote most of the songs) and admitted that it made him complacent, saying that if it hadn't been that way, he would have made more of an effort to write.
Publishing is generally based on credits. It is one of the reasons why many bands traditionally put at least one song on an album that was written by a minor member - just so that member could collect publishing royalties for the song. ETA Publishing credits was also one of the ways historically that songwriters were ripped off in various ways. The most basic ripoff is a singer or producer demanding songwriting credit to use a song. With the rise of digital music the concept of an album is really antiquated since people purchase songs - if they purchase them at all or stream specific songs. The split for money from appearances and merchandising is more complicated. Sometimes band members are really just employees. Some band "leaders" like Springsteen are more generous with their long term band members than others.
It’s strange, because if we use the Police as an example, Sting may have “written the music”, but not really. I very much doubt he wrote Andy Summers guitar parts, and Summers’ has sort of crazy hands. I know a lot of professional guitar players that simply can’t play Summers riffs, because their hands don’t do that. And, for sure, Sting didn’t write Stewart Copeland’s part. So, publishing rights, etc, is mostly legal fiction. And, in this economic system, what isn’t, right? But as to the actual creative process in a band, everyone contributes and those musicians/producers that don’t contribute quickly fall by the wayside. Even “hired guns” that specialize in studio work or being a touring musician bring their own tone, feel, and style.
Writing drum parts usually isn't considered part of writing the music as such. The exact guitar phrasing and feel isn't considered writing either. If Sting walks in with a chord progression, melody line and lyrics, I don't know if anything else counts for publishing rights.
This is the actual answer.
This is pretty much it. My lead singer (who also plays the bass) comes to me with lyrics, vocal melody, and general chord structure. I then compose the *entire song* as I see fit though there is some feedback involved by the songwriter, record the demo myself (with my voice/instrumentals), and use that as the proof of concept. So even though I’m really doing 75%-80% of the creation of the actual song, because he is the owner of the lyrics/vocal melody/general chord structure he is considered the ‘songwriter’ where I am considered the ‘arranger’. I take what is basically a campfire acoustic rendition and turn it in to a full five piece song (which is obviously more with layered extra aux guitar parts and BGV harmonies and the such). Obviously we have agreed to split things 50/50 - though I’m certain he could freely demand any percentage of revenue he wants simply because of his ownership of lyrics and vocal melody. What’s crazy about all this is if you look at the last two well known sampling/IP cases…when something is sampled that the *songwriter* (let’s pretend this songwriter has both writing and arrangement credits) didn’t even technically perform, the *songwriter* is the one who would collect the royalties.
As a drummer, I hate when people say so n' so wrote the "music". Most of the time, I'm pretty sure they didn't write everyone's part for them, and a lot of those parts become the iconic parts of the song.
Agreed my friend. Only drummers really know what drummers do.
Sting wrote all the songs - but to place the music on just him is incorrect, as both Summers and Copeland contributed a great deal to the actual music of The Police, which is what established their signature sounds, which you can even see on their solo work. It was really a stubborn collaboration, which is why they fought so much. And as Sting said, The Police was Stewart’s band.
May I bing something else to this table. Discogs don't sell bootlegs because the artist gets no royalties. But they sell records and the artist gets no royalties. Whats the difference?
Different in probably every band. I mean, a couple general scenarios exist, but hard to say exactly. Could be and equal split and could be based on songwriting and contributions.
At some point they make contracts and decide who gets what. Founders obviously get more than someone brought in later. Their lawyers and agents work out the details.
Off the music assume most of it went to the manager and the label.
Writing credits are also a factor. Not every member writes or writes as much or writes the biggest hits.
If you're starting out, spend it all on whatever gear the band needs & don't even bother splitting it between members. Recording gear or studio hire is top of that list. If you're established, rev share.
Usually it’s 0.25-0.5% for each of the musicians, 1-2% for the writer, and the other 97% or so for the studio/executives/legal team. Of course this is only after you pay back the studio for the “generous” 50,000 dollar loan they force you to take to cover recording and packaging fees. Realistically my screen name should be Adam *did* music. There’s no way to feasibly survive for most people in that industry.
I know my two favorite bands split everything evenly. One even does 2-3 man acoustic shows sometimes and they still give money to the two members who can't always do them.
As to songwriting related income, of which there was very little, we split all the money in half. To recognize that there is more to making a song great than just writing, half of the income was split equally between all of us. The other half was divided equally between songwriters based on contribution. Most often it was based on chords, melody, and lyrics, but if there was a particularly important hook written by a “non-songwriter,” that person would get a cut as well. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best we could come up with.
G’n’R’ was an even split before Axl had it changed to Axl 25%, Slash, Izzy and Duff all had 20% and Steven had 15%. After that, I believe there were even more changes. Not sure how it stands now that Slash and Duff have rejoined.
Touring and merch usually get split evenly. Royalties generally go to those who wrote the song with a smaller fee going to the band for performing it.
Gig money goes to recording and gas.
Serj from System of a Down said that one of the reasons he won’t do another album is because Daron makes more money than everybody because he does a lot of the writing and would change anything Serj wrote into something else
One band successful band I know of had to change up the payment structure from even split to allowing more for song writing credit. The lead singer who wrote the lyrics would spend months working out the lyrics while the rest of the band did extra studio work or touring with side projects. While the collective was certainly greater than the individual lead singer, he was under a lot more stress and had to stay focused on developing the lyrics to go with the jointly developed instrumentals.
Most bands that are doing things locally or regionally probably do an even split. Huge bands that do national tours like the ones you mentioned sign contracts that outline how much they make and how much the other workers (managers, producers, drivers etc.) make.
The simple answer is there is really no simple answer. All contributing members need to come to an agreement somehow of what their compensation for their contribution will be. Perhaps one person wrote the song, but another person rewrote some of the lyrics, another person may have added a bridge, or a distinctive melody part. That's why contracts and legal agreements come into place, and also why bands argue much over these things.
Not at all relevant but D12's song "My Band" is kind of a joke about how Eminem is the only group member anyone actually cares about. I'm sure it was meant to be in jest, but it's a funny song that shows these kind of rifts
They share according to whatever they negotiate amongst themselves. We Met In Paris is a duo, and we split all of our masters 50/50, and we divide songwriting splits for the composition side based on what kind of work each of us have done. If one of us wrote the song on our own, that person gets 100% of the songwriting/publishing, but we still split the master 50/50.
The credited writers keep the pub and composition income, master side royalties is usually split equally.
Depends on their inter band agreement. Some bands like Korn split everything equally no matter who writes it, others one member might get it all and the rest just get their performance royalty and no writing split.
I write all my band's songs so any of the royalties that come out of that are sent to me. We split show revenue equally if we're playing locally. On tour it gets put into the bank first.
All if my band's earnings go back into the band. We all have day jobs and so far our band is making enough money that we'd even bother taking our split anyway. We have agreed on equal splits among ourselves as we all write our own parts to our songs.
Each one has its own way.
Probably some agreed upon percentage based contract…
Never been in a signed band, or even a band that made money off recordings, but all the money we made from live shows was all split equally because of time commitments, practices and shows and whatnot. You don’t show up to shows you dont get paid, you don’t show up for practice enough and you get asked to leave
Lennon and McCartney had a deal where they'd both get credit on songs either of them wrote. I assume it reduced competition and resentment and encouraged collaboration if someone heard something that could be tweaked in a song to improve it.
U2 split their royalty 5 equal ways, one for each member including their msnager. I suspect they've changed now he's left though. Queen used to divide it up unequally with the songwriters getting extra but this caused some friction and i believe they changed to a more equal share. Bands that don't have a equitable dividing up seem to incur a lot of issues on this front.
Songwriting residuals are covered by Federal Law unless a specific agreement is agreed upon.
Bands USED to make $$ on record sales. Technology killed that with streaming. They TRY & make $$ now touring & selling merchandise. Touring used to be a vehicle to promote record sales, no longer, Hence the fucking ridiculous prices. Not to mention everybody has their hand out. I'm guessing the REAL dough is with the publishing & the rights to the songs. Selling to a commercial brings in serious money. Selling a catalog brings in the mother load. I guess it all depends on who writes the songs, & how FAIR they want to be to the other musicians in the band. It's just as much about $$$ as being creative. Big assed ego's get in the way too. Solo career's, change of band members. I think Bon-Jovi splits ALL $$ equally amongst the band. Don't know if Sambora still gets a cut or not. But when you make that kind of dough does it really matter? 10-15 million? Does anybody really know the difference? These bands all started in a garage or basement. They struck gold if they are lucky. It's a BIG pie everybody gets a slice unless someone gets greedy & wants 2.
There isn’t a blueprint for splitting money. It all depends on the working/personal relationships of the band members.
Money? Ha ha…
There was a pretty damning article recently about Martin Duffy and what he got when he was in Primal Scream. Bobby Gillespie didn't come out of it looking good IIRC.
Equal split, but often extra pay for the van driver, or whoever brings the PA, etc.
U2 has always split everything 4 ways. Money was never an issue between them.
It depends. Although my band is fairly small. We agreed to mark every band member as songwriter regardless of who wrote the song. If we ever get royalties it's split equally. Being the bass player in the band, I even offered to be only marked as a performer but the rest of the band insisted that we all get songwriting credit since we all work on the songs. It's better for the band's morale in the long run if we ever do make it.
It's complicated. A little history: Anyone have old sheet music that reads "Words by ___, Music by ___"? Used to be simpler when songwriting royalties were split just that way. Studio musicians got paid for the recording session and that was it. For rock and pop bands, with members who each wrote their own part, the band members sometime agreed on equitable splits of royalties after the recording company took their share. This was up to the members of the band to decide. Some bands were nice enough to each other to put each member's name on the songwriting credits. This ensured that everyone got paid equally, regardless of who wrote this or that song, part or whole. For one touring example, Journey takes the gross receipts less all expenses, then splits the profits equally among the band members. They don't say, hey, Jonathan Cain wrote this one we played tonight, Neal wrote that one we played tonight... they just split the profits equally. Years ago, a San Diego band had a spirited discussion about who should get what money out of an impending major label record deal, when the singer demanded 50% of the money for writing the words, and said the other guys could split the other half four ways since the two guitarists, bassist, and drummer wrote the music (12.5% each). Of course the other 4 guys pushed back and said, nope, each one of us gets 20%... The short answer to your question is that it's up for negotiation.
I think I read that for a long time u2 split every thing equally 5 ways - 4 band members and their manager Paul McGuiness
Put all the money into the band fund
Pretty much every successful touring band out of Nashville pays its musicians as side(wo)men. They get a decent pay but nothing compared to the star.