In the music publishing world, there are big players like Universal, Sony, and Warner-Chappell, and other small and medium ones. These publishers sign contracts with several creators. I'm not talking here about singers, but songwriters.
The contracts songwriters sign force them to transfer ownership of their works to the publishers. It is common practice in Canada—and even elsewhere in the world—for a songwriter to assign ownership of his works, which then no longer belong to him or her, in exchange for remuneration. In Canada, 50% of that remuneration goes to the publisher, and the other half goes to the songwriter. If you are the sole songwriter, you receive all of that 50%, but if there are two or more of you, that figure goes down.
Companies can thus increase their assets and their capital, but in every instance, the songwriter sees 50% of his income go to the publisher. If he's fortunate enough to also be a singer, his record company will also provide remuneration, but once again, that is only a small percentage. Unfortunately, the monies generated are chopped up in this way.
It has been said repeatedly that royalties paid to songwriters for the online plays of their works have never offset the loss of income they used to get from the sale of their compact disks, since those royalties have been completely divided up in the same way. And so their incomes can only stagnate or decline, and they weren't all that great to begin with. If the songwriter is also a singer, he is then in another category and may make more. For the creators, however, that is the situation.
In the days of compact disks, each song brought in 10¢ for the songwriters. Thus, a 10-song album generated a dollar for the creators, and half of that went to the publisher or publishers, and the other half to the songwriter or songwriters. Someone is losing out from this shift, and clearly it is neither the publishers nor the companies, but the music creators who are forced to assign ownership of their rights and be satisfied with the meagre incomes they are given.