I would have thought so. Even in the Tin Pan Alley days I think. But definitely going back to the Brill Building days songwriters got royalty checks - they shared with the publisher, of course. Think of Burt Bachrach - wealthy from songs he wrote but did not perform. Carole King, too. But I'm sure there are different "deals" made by different publishers, etc.
Right, but in that case it was the way their "publishing" deals were written.
Tons of bands never got any "publishing" for airplay, only unit sales.
Have no clue how Dylan's deal was written but perhaps some of his contemporaries advised him and for that matter manager Albert Grossman had a pretty good rep too so like others say, yeah suspect he actually
did get paid.
But let's take the case of the Animals "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" from the very Brill Building team of Mann & Weil:
Think publisher and Mann & Weil got all the airplay royalties, Animals only got record sales (performer) royalties.
Even if not true in that case, know for sure it was in other cases, as in "Somebody To Love".
It was one of the things that clued me in to what a sweet deal just being a songwriter could be.
And to bring it to today, from cheatsheet.com, regarding the movie "Yesterday" (2019):
According to Danny Boyle and the filmmakers, it takes more than money to get to use Beatles songs. The estates of Lennon and Harrison, along with McCartney and Ringo Starr, need to approve of the project you are working on.
Right but that harkens back to McCartney's original desire when he owned the catalog that Beatles tunes never be used for commercials; broken when Michael Jackson acquired eth publishing and "Revolution" was used to sell..well, whatever it was..so am sure that's a corollary clause that was probably attached to a publishing rights acquisition of the catalog at some point.
And I have no problem with it, but I suspect it's pretty unique.
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