I recall a Paul Harvey story about Stephen Foster.
He wrote probably dozens of the world’s most famous songs but died in a poor house. Hardly any publisher payed him for his copyrights. They just printed the songs and sold them.
A common publisher practice, then as now, was to buy a song outright if possible. Foster churned out enough stuff with his creds that, according to one estimate I saw, he was earning what would be about $50K a year in today’s money. (Eat that, wannabe Nashville artists.) But he had a liquor habit and, as Harvey said, died poor.