Crazy how one song can make a career.
Of course, I thought about it, and this is true in regard to all kinds of things.
- After multiple business failures, you only need one success to have wealth.
- One blog post can get you a book deal, and turn you in to a professional writer.
- One successful trade can allow you to retire.
- And one song can begat hundreds of millions of dollars.
One hit can change everything.
The takeaway here it to keep going. A little traction can lead to more. And then more. Success compounds. And one single hit can start it all.
You got this.
A smash hit not only makes the songwriters a bundle on radio spins, it also moves the album, which generally benefits the label, and sells tickets to the world tour, which is how the artists make most of their money. A historic smash can be worth hundreds of millions for the rights holders over the term of its copyright, which, depending on when the song was composed, is the life of its composers plus fifty or sixty years. “Stairway to Heaven” alone was said to have earned its rights holders more than half a billion dollars by 2008.
-John Seabrook, The Song Machine
