Hey Jenny,

So glad John and his wife are doing better. Been a tough year last year and this year is not getting a lot better. Nashville has been hit by a major bombing, tornadoes, Covid, shut downs, the music industry nearly wiped out, and now, we are belted by a snowstorm that has kept the town shut down with more snow coming. It's isolation whether you want it or not. But what you gonna do. I can check out some forums and respond if anyone is interested.

It always has been customary for it to take a year or more to gather and collect money on song activity. Part of it goes back to the time there were a lot of physical product sold. You would be paid for PERFORMANCES, and MECHANICALS. Records would go into the record stores, and be there for a while, until they either sold or didn't. Then you would have RETURNS, which would be unsold product. So people might be misled because they SHIPPED a lot of records, but not many sold and came back. So those were not paid for. Performance royalties would vary from region to region. Some radio stations had less audience reach, so there was less advertising revenue and less pay outs. Music videos did not pay as they were considered "promotion." And considering a lot of money was ADVANCED to artists, all that had to be paid back.

There were "RADIO HITS" and "SALES HITS." Some songs got enormous airplay, but sold very little physical product. And vice versa, there were songs that sold a lot of product, but not much radio activity. Songs that got into television or motion pictures, might be involved in several other production deals that siphon off money. Companies got bought and sold in the middle of successes, or closed entirely, and even finding money sometimes was a tough thing.

I had a friend who was a publisher on a song that became a number three hit in Greece. It was on a European trio of women, sort of a "Destiny's Child" group that were huge in Europe. They had billboards, did enormous tours, television, etc. They were everywhere. My friend got this cut and after three years had not seen a dime. His performance rights society, BMI, couldn't find out what happened. He sent hundreds of emails and phone calls, hired lawyers, etc. Nobody could ever seem to track down what happened. Then he found out that in Greece, their performance rights society was owned by the govt of Greece, which was a SOCIALIST country. There were riots going on in the streets, and huge unrest and fighting. The money had just dissapeared, absorbed by the govt. When you have street terrorism, paying out for a song just isn't that big a priority. 

So this "taking forever" to be paid, or sometimes not at all, goes back a long way. The term "starving artist" is there for a reason. I've had many, many, friends have enormous number one hits that won all kinds of awards and when the actual checks came in, they were MUCH less than they had envisioned, and not only did they NOT BUY  huge houses and cars, they were doing well to come out with anything. Another friend I had was driving a postal route until he heard his song on the radio. And continued that for a couple years before he could quit. 

So the low payouts, long term waiting, etc. is nothing new. The Internet just exacerbated an already bad situation. The goal posts keep being moved. You need more and more streams to account for anything. Different outlets pay different amounts. So getting anything is tricky at best. 
In Nashville, you NEVER give up your day job. Even if you have a writing deal, you usually still do demos, live gigs, often have to travel out of town to be able to earn anything. People who become hit writers also own construction, plumbing or electrician businesses that they build BEFORE their music happens. They don't give those up. They stay current on regulations, laws, etc. and subcontract those out to other people yet keep their liscences and everything up to date. And sure enough, even though they might get successful for a while, they often have to go BACK to their businesses when the hits stop. 

So in all my conversations about AMATEUR WRITER" I think that many of us "professional writers" also do other things. But I think what donates "professional" is the approach to the craft and business. Putting in the hours. Doing the things behind the scenes. And that never stops.

I knew this guy who became a huge hit writer. He had been working for years, with nothing then all of a sudden gets one huge hit and that leads to several more. They just kept coming. HE was asked in an interview about "What are you doing differently now than before to get all these hits." He said "Nothing. I do the same things. I just had to wait until my friends got in positions to say yes."

What that meant was his friends, who he had moved to town with, had branched out into producing, publishing, heading labels. Some times that is what it takes. Never know.

MAB