Does anyone remember the Muddy Water Blues album by Paul Rodgers. One CD full of blues classics on which our Paul has no publishing then a free of charge bonus with rerecorded Free/Bad Company tracks which presumably he does have publishing on.

I always assumed the idea was to dilute the payments to the old blues geezers and shove some readies into Mr Rodgers pocket...or am I being cynical here.

...I would guess that "the old blues geezers" publishing probably got swallowed up by some huge publishing combine years ago and I don't think this would be done to dilute anyone's share because you only pay for the songs you use. Generally speaking it's not a conspiracy so much as someone's rather pathetic desire to get something heard.

I used to have a friend or two in music publishing. In the days of physical sales, having the B-side of a hit brought in as much publishing revenue as did the A-side. (It sold equally as many copies). If the hit came out of left field, so much the more fun, like having placed the B-side tune on Telly Savalas' "If", which was an unexpectedly huge seller.
Also, when the TV-advertised compilation album was big in the late 70s/early 80's, some labels would insist that if your Roncos or K-Tels wanted to use one of their big hits, they would also have to take a non-hit track by a lesser known in-house act they were keen to break. If you've got any of those TV ad comp albums, check the tracklists. There's usually a few chart non-botherers tacked on. That's why.

on the aforementioned free CD. In the small print: "Tracks 1-10 are licensed from Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited. Tracks 11-15 copyright control."
So the rubbish tracks are are different publishing bag. What the hell does it all mean. Still seems to me that either the Independent save money spreading the quality so thin, or the publishers (Sony BMG in this case) demand it, although the vague 'copyright control' for the dross might well not mean them. So why the differentiation?
I wish this wasn't bothering me.

The newspaper will have a budget to put together a 15 or 16-track CD. What this comes down to is a price-per-unit that they're willing to pay. With the large number of CDs produced in these campaigns, any price saving is considerable.

They'll then take this figure to whichever company is putting together the CD for them, who will have to produce the CD to these constraints. Now one of the biggest costs involved is the payment of mechanical royalties, which is a payment made to an artist each time a physical copy of a CD is produced - but to receive this payment, the artist must be registered with the collecting society that looks after these kinds of royalties, the MCPS.

So the company making the CD will work out how many MCPS-registered artists they can afford to have on the CD (out of the 15 or 16 tracks) and remain within budget. Once they've arrived at the number, the rest of the tracks will be provided by non-MCPS-registered artists (i.e. the ones tacked on at the end you've never heard of).

Say, for argument's sake, that a CD comes out that has eight MCPS registered artists and eight non-registered. The paper can claim in its advertising, "Free 16 track CD! Out on Sunday!", but in reality they're only paying for 50% of those tracks. And the artists who aren't getting paid (who will sign a contract to NOT register the tracks or back claim with the MCPS) are presumably happy to receive exposure they otherwise wouldn't get.

Or something like that.

Elsewhere on the web, there is a recent and lengthy list of songs that haven't been registered with PPL, (the body that collects money on behalf of artists and musicians when the songs are broadcast).

Word readers may be interested to know that money awaits collection for;
Slim Harpo -Shake Your Hips
McFadden & Whitehead -Aint No Stoppin'
Tommy James - Mony Mony (taken from a 'Mutual Of New York' street sign, never knew that, thanks Danny Baker)
The Tweets - Birdie Song
Jim Henson - Mana Mana
Paper Lace -Billy Don't Be a Hero
Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You
Dancing In The City - Marshall Hain

I've often wondered how this works too.

I'm also not convinced all of the aditional "artists" actually exist - I've had a few where tracks 11-15 are listed as 5 different acts, but all sound like the work of the same person.