Sounds like extortion to me. "Give us more of a cut, and well let you work as a songwriter"

I thought money in songwriting was gone, but this article says otherwise. Guess were talking huge names.

https://variety.com/2021/music/news/dirty-business-hit-songwriting-1234946090/

As songwriters have seen their leverage eroded by streaming — which pays a larger royalty for recorded music than publishing — artists, managers, producers and even executives have amped up their demands for credit and/or a percentage of the songwriters’ publishing in exchange for the artist cutting the song, or even simply for bringing the song to the artist. And as the value of song catalogs has risen in recent years, with Bob Dylan selling his to Universal Music Publishing for more than $300 million and Stevie Nicks selling hers to Primary Wave for $100 million, sources say, more people are playing hardball.