A Songwriter receives 3 separate income streams from each song. These include:
- Mechanical royalties: Physical album or digital download sales
- Performance royalties: Live performances, online streaming, and radio play
- Synch fees:Songs used in movies, TV, commercials, and video games
With mechanical royalties, the fee paid per song is currently 9.1 cents. This is often split between Co-Writers and Publishers.
Performance royalties have no standard rate. The rate is negotiated between the Songwriter and their Performing Rights Organization. BMI actually has a “hit song bonus,” which means a song will get a nice financial bonus once it is performed 95,000+ times within a quarter.2
Synch fees vary and are negotiated but generally speaking, the artist/record label would receive 50% of the negotiated fee and the Songwriter(s) would receive 50% of the negotiated fee.
Taking all these elements into account, it’s pretty much impossible to state a definitive amount that a hit song would earn for a Songwriter.
However, we can break down a portion of it. Let’s use Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” as an example. As 2019’s best-selling global digital single, the track sold 19.5 million units. The song has two Writers: Billie and her brother, Finneas. Therefore, at a rate of 9.1 cents per digital single, the two Writers would evenly split $1,774,500.
This figure does not include the sales figures for the song’s appearance on Eilish’s album, the performance royalties generated from covers, the song’s synch fees for use in a Calvin Klein campaign, or any of the other ways in which the song could continue to earn income for the duo.