Are pop songs inherently valuable? Artistically they're not usually interesting but in the market sense, would people listen to them without the massive marketing push?
I strongly support distribution of profits in the relation to the value being created. While it is absolutely possible, even commonplace, for organizations to exploit their workers and other smaller orgs, I also suspect that value in "hit" songs is created elsewhere: in production, marketing, name recognition of the singer, etc.
I'm not an IP lawyer, but I have a handful of patents. As a patent lawyer explained to me, the list of inventors on a patent should be strictly based on whether somebody actually invented something or not. It's not like an academic paper, where everybody on the team gets to be an "author."
In my view the same thing should apply to songwriting. The current standard is, you wrote a song if you wrote the melody or the words. Sometimes those are two different people.
If you added value in other ways, add your name to some other contract specifying distribution of proceeds.
The songwriting is extremely valuable, otherwise just write your own damn songs.
As an aside, "inherent value" is a mushy concept that seems to defy any meaningful description.
If you do that, then performers will just exert their power in other ways (by reducing royalties for song-writers).
Fundamentally, this is happening because the quality of the song-writing isn't really all that important to the success of a pop star. Marketing, production quality, and sex appeal are more important. It's really not that hard to write a 4-chord song about breaking up with your boyfriend.
If song-writers think they should be getting rich off these popular songs, there is nothing stopping them from performing the song themselves. They don't do that though because they know they'll make more money letting Taylor Swift sing it.
The songwriting is extremely valuable, otherwise just write your own damn songs.
If it's so valuable, how can these companies find "hit" writers for £100 a piece? While it is entirely possible for something of immense artistic or technical value to not be priced commensurately on the market, I've heard these songs, this is not the case here.
Because the hit writers who are working for $100 a piece, are expecting that if their song gets picked up, they will share in its success through their publishing royalties.
Yes, they're valuable because they capture many listeners and generate revenue. It doesn't need to interesting for it to be valuable.
Plenty of interesting music flies under the radar. Even without the massive marketing push some artists get, the same artists would still rise to the top producing familiar song structures the average listener can recognize.
It’s all aesthetics to be sure but a lot of pop music doesn’t take risks. Song structures are formulaic as are chord progressions and the notes used for melodies.
How many hit songs use the same I-V-vi-IV progression? It works is why but it isn’t interesting to a discerning listener.
It seems like a lot of pop music is more like fashion than music. Image leads and after removing the stylistic facade you see the same underlying infrastructure. There are exceptions to the rule of course.
Nirvana was an interesting pop music band because many of their songs used weird progressions. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” shouldn’t work according to therory, but it obviously does.
And then of course how pop music is mixed and mastered today. Almost no dynamic range because of the “loudness wars”.
That's fair criticism, but I don't think it makes pop music any less artistic. There's something to be said about music that goes beyond the listener's ears and also taps into fashion, make-up trends, viral dances and that kind of stuff. That's where the risk is, and while it's paid off in the past (like Lady Gaga, David Bowie, etc), there's also numerous cases where it didn't as much (Ava Max, Viktoria Modesta).
I also believe there's artistic value in music that understands it's just ear-candy and doesn't try to be something else. In a world where so many people are trying to score a hit with the same chord progression for example, the ones that succeed stand out in other factors, and in my opinion it doesn't matter if it's some catchy verse on the refrain or something about the performer like Lady Gaga's provocative performances back in the early 2010s.
It is what it is - it is popular for a reason. It doesn’t require effort from the listener and as you pointed out it lets people identify with a culture, etc. there’s a reason most people stop seeking out new music in their mid-20’s. Popular music is mainly a youth product which lets each cohort draw cultural boundaries from previous generations.
What’s great about modern info tech is it makes it easier to explore artists of your youth that you never knew about. You can get really deep which makes it feel like now music is still being made for you.
It isn’t like there aren’t infinite other styles for people that want it. Jazz is a great example of “musicians music” - lots of interesting ideas get explored there and dissonance is used which you rarely find in pop.
They actually have software that helps crank out hits nowadays. It’s an interesting time to be a songwriter in Nashville.
I strongly support distribution of profits in the relation to the value being created. While it is absolutely possible, even commonplace, for organizations to exploit their workers and other smaller orgs, I also suspect that value in "hit" songs is created elsewhere: in production, marketing, name recognition of the singer, etc.