I worked for Decca Records (UK) in the early 70s I worked in the accounts department. I saw a lot of contracts with Publishers/artiste. I was quite suprised at the apparently small % paid to a lot of the people at that time it was usually something like 2.35% of 70% of wholesale value of units sold. At that time the Wholesale value of an album of say 12 songs was approx 50 Pence. That equates to about 0.06 pence per song to the writer! Mind you Decca were old school and the independant labels were on the rise. Bands like The Stones, Thin Lizzy etc ran as soon as their contacts were up!