[earbitscom]

Nah, you're absolutely correct. And in fact, it's crazy because one single song can have 3 writers, 8 performers, a record label, 2 publishers and two different performance rights organizations all with a stake in that track. But, we paid standard rates to publishers and only needed to convince the owners of the master recording to license the music to us, which is usually a label or band. Then we had listeners. We were mostly just trying to please those two groups, but that's because we paid the publishers outright.