“"Happy" made $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties from 43 million Pandora streams in the first quarter of 2014, according to an email from music publis

“"Happy" made $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties from 43 million Pandora streams in the first quarter of 2014, according to an email from music publisher Sony/ATV CEO Marty Bandier” -paragraph 2, italics mine; that’s $2700 to the publisher, who then gave some part of that to the artist. But then paragraphs 4/5 say that “Fusion's Rob Wile points out that these numbers aren't all inclusive and don't include performance rights royalty rates, so Pharrell likely earned [...] approximately $25,000 from the 43 million plays” And later on Pandora says that “Pandora paid all rights holders more than $150,000 in just three months [for “Happy” and anywhere from one to a half dozen other songs mentioned in the Sony CEO’s email, there is a lot of ambiguity here IMHO], substantially more than the $6,100 he suggests.” There’s a pretty wide disparity in the numbers they are throwing around; if I am reading this all correctly then it seems that Sony may be saying “Sony and Pharrel got a few thousand bucks of royalties due to him as the composer of Happy” while ignoring that he also got about $150k of estimated royalties due to him as the performer of this specific recording of “Happy”, with an unspecified sum on top of that going to Sony and maybe various other people involved in arranging and producing the track. Music royalties are really complicated.