In the marketplace, the song will primarily be consumed via streaming through various digital service providers like Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. So, the songwriter will likely receive mechanical royalty payments which pale in comparison to what a songwriter would have received when physical record sales were in their hay-day. There are also myriad opportunities for a songwriter to have one of their songs placed in a film or TV show, and a whole licensing sub-industry has developed around that process, called synchronization. The life of a songwriter is not what it used to be: it’s tougher to be one full-time, and yet there are many more ways to get one’s music out into the world.
