As an example, Bach has approx. 6 million listeners monthly on Spotify. Who gets those royalties? Are they profit for streaming services? Donated? Given to a trust?
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Hiya! My SO is a composer himself as well as an assistant to another very well known composer.
From what I understand they do and can make money off their music today but it’s not to the same scale as say even 100 years ago.
Main sources of income now come from things like commissions themselves (big ones come from larger companies like the Met Opera, big orchestras around the world etc) that pay for the composition of a specific piece of music.
His boss started his own publishing house that also helps earn him money as his boss can also own all the rights to his own music so if someone wants to play his piece, they need to pay for it.
There is also an organization called BMI that assists smaller composers (my boyfriend included) with pay by paying for every single preformance of his music (not talking big money here tho).
There is also the work modern composers can get from modern projects: tv, movies, commercials all need music that they pay for or pay for the rights for!
All this said he’s always called it a dying field because we simply don’t enjoy classical (or I think a better word for it is orchestral) music the same way we did a few decades/centuries ago 🙂
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