Quote Originally Posted by Ive always been a dreamer View Post
One of the things I discovered about U.S. Copyright law is that apparently only the writers of a song's melody and lyrics are legally entitled to receive songwriting credit. To me, the writer of a song's music should also be entitled to royalties as well. At least, the members of the Eagles apparently agreed because they did credit the writer of the music.
That is a practice which is fairly common I would say (the latter, I mean). In certain cases a band member having nothing to do with the writing of a song might receive credit as recompense for other reasons; it's sort of the same situation as someone else owning all or part of an artist's publishing. The industry in its various permutations has a core practice: external forces often dictate who ends up with the cash.