CloisteredFlame
Burn my house just to see her...
I suspect she was earning an OK sum. The thing about your royalties is it depends on the contracts you signed.Part of me is happy that they are doing lives, even if I cannot go... but another part of me is sad because they ignore Kajiura existence even if she was the backbone of Kalafina back then. If they don't plan to release new songs they will just do easy money with Kajiura previous work, sadly... I know she will gain her royalities, but I believe when she was part of SC she could get more money from Kalafina lives.
As I saw in a explanatory video on YouTube about the American industry, I learned that if you sign a recording contract you no longer have full rights to the "masters" (the finalized originals) as it belongs to the recording company. If you sign a publishing contract, you give up full rights to the composition and so on to take advantage of their ability to print and promote the work. It actually belongs to the publishing company.
For example, Michael Jackson purchased the publishing rights to the majority of The Beatles' catalog in 1985 for $47.5 million but it was later worth close to billion. https://finelytunedmusic.com/articles/michael-jackson-and-the-beatles-music-catalog/ (In the article, "Retaining the publishing rights gave him authority to regulate the commercial usage of these legendary songs.").
Kajiura cannot regulate the commercial use of her music if it's in the hands of others.
You can bet that Kajiura is earning a lot more per song for her post-Kalafina stuff under her own management, having taken up and putting together her own team. Building her own recording studio also means she doesn't need to pay for studio time or depend on anyone else. She can just bring in the people to work on projects as she needs them, so she can fully own her masters.