Link: Paying John Stewart
My memory is a bit dim, but I seem to remember that a) performers had to cede copyrights to the recordings themselves to the record companies in order to get records released, and b) that in the rare cases that performances themselves were retained by the artists, they earned 1 cent per unit sold, album or single, and half a cent per radio play.
That explains why the pop folk performers - starting with The Weavers - were eager to claim copyright for traditional songs. It also explains in part how Lennon and McCartney lost control of the copyrights of the songs that they wrote; you may recall that these ended up as property of Michael Jackson, though I believe McCartney eventually bought them back - bought back the rights to songs that he had co-written.
The whole thing is byzantine in its complexity and fundamentally without integrity, unless the artists have a reputable publisher like Milt Okun of Cherry Lane Music actively to watch out for the artists' financial interests. I believe that Okun collected royalties for The Beatles' catalog on the group's behalf until the Apple Corps sold it out from under them.
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