One thing that should be noted on this, the figures on sales of these songs can be somewhat misleading. In the instance of Meghan Trainor, for instance and her "ALL ABOUT THE BASS" song, the sales on the song were included with sales of PRODUCTS relating to that song.The "talking fish" for instance, that hangs on the wall, you push a button, and it sings the song, was a big part of that, selling very well, especially during the Christmas season. It was also used in commericals, film and television, t-shirts, dolls, all sorts of products . Not to mention her profile in concerts, those figures reflect much more than just the song itself. The same can be said of most of the songs on that list. Many can be streamed or file shared and are fine with the artist if it pushes their live concert or other profiles.

There was a period a few years ago, when Lady Ga Ga made around $20,000 on the airlplay and sales of one of her songs. During the same period, her live concerts and merchandising, endorsements, totalled around $60 MILLION dollars.

So when you are reading articles on money and today's music market, they can be somewhat misleading. Spotify, for instance is one of the worlds worst offenders, claiming they are paying all this money out but almost no writers are reporting huge checks. I do know of one, Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" which paid the three writers and their publishers a little over $10,000 for 200 million streams. Of course at the same time, Miley was jet setting throughout the world, making millions upon millions of dollars.

So yes, there are artists, songs, careers that do quite well. The Kardashians make millions on "what?" Figure that one out and you can figure out the basis for most of our problems. But if you were to strip away a lot of this, you will probably find that the actual money has to do more with ARTIST BRANDING than any one song.


MAB