To some degree that is what happened, though I'm sure he was screwed by a lawyer rather than the artist himself.

When they offered this songwriter some % of song royalties, they knew ahead of time that it wasn't going to be a whole lot of money.

Solution? Songwriters need a new metric to charge by.

One problem, though, is that perhaps songwriting isn't actually worth that much. When you look at a performer like Justin Beiber, how much of his income depends on specific songs that he's putting out? I'm not sure, but I don't necessarily think it's a large amount.