With the fields dominated by acts, how people make a living gets even more convoluted. Some songwriters who regularly work in-house for a label get paid "advances" that are really more like salaries (regular monthly payments, sometimes considerably higher than the expected royalties). That's especially common for career songwriters in-house at places like Nashville. Young pop or hip-hop songwriters hoping to use it as a stepping-stone to become an act themselves might not get paid a salary.
