Why do many pop songs have so many different songwriters listed?

Question

I see so many songs with 3-5 or more listed in the credits. I always thought sometimes one person wrote music, and another wrote lyrics. Why can it take around 5 people to write a song?

In: 120

Answer 1

Idk how true this is, but I read that some in-house songwriters will make superficial changes to everything they can in order to have a credit, which gets them royalties. I imagine if you do this enough times, you end up with a monster hit to your ‘credit’. No idea what kind of royalties songwriters get, let alone when it’s split a dozen ways, but even 1c/play is gonna add up if you get your name attached to the biggest song of the year.