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INTEREST: Rica Matsumoto Says She Earned No Royalties From Iconic Japanese Pokémon Theme Song

I'm completely for giving singers extended royalties for successful songs (in fact, I think it should be a requirement), so if she requested it, I'd support her, but I also think this is one of those cases where her reputation, from the song or otherwise, outclasses the need for it. I am happy for her success! She deserves it. =)

Character songs and the like (the Pokémon opening was probably considered on the same level) are usually a complete buy-out.

So when the CDs sell, the profit is directed towards the Production Committee right?

Quickly, the decision was made to put out an album of original music, and 4Kids once again turned to Loeffler and Siegler to make it happen. Paige was called back in to sing an extended version of the “Pokémon Theme,” as well as a new song called “Viridian City” penned by Loeffler and songwriter Neil Jason. The finished album, 2 B A Master, was completed in less than a month, Loeffler has said in interviews, and featured 13 original songs sung by various session vocalists and artists. Released June 29, 1999, via the Koch Records label (alongside Nintendo of America, 4Kids Entertainment and Cherry Lane Music Publishing), 2 B A Master proved to be another hit for the franchise: it was certified platinum by the RIAA, having sold 500,000 copies in the United States, in four months. By 2003, Koch president Bob Frank claimed it had sold three million copies worldwide.

Not everyone was making money, however. Several of the vocalists who worked on the album, including Paige, were unhappy with their contracts. For recording the show’s initial 60-second theme song — which ran through January of 2000 — Paige says he was paid “in the three figures, with the promise of future compensation on the album.” But in the time between signing his initial contract and the album’s release, the Pokémon franchise had ballooned into a $5 billion global operation, and Paige’s contract did not include royalties from licensed products that used his voice.

“Between the TV show and the completion of the album, there was a myriad of other products that came up as well that started using little sound bytes of the song,” Paige says. “How do you determine what the compensation should be for a sound byte coming off a plastic watch? Or a little pinball machine? Or a room greeter in a Blockbuster video store?”

Paige hired a lawyer to try to recoup royalties from seven different companies that used his voice, a process he says played out over more than a year. In the end, a settlement was negotiated out of court with each of the companies that were using his voice paying Paige a flat fee amounting to a total less than $100,000, the singer says. (While Paige declined to be more specific than that, the New York Post put the number in the mid-five figures.) By the end of 2000, with estimates placing Pokémon’s worldwide value north of $10 billion, Paige was out.

“If I had taken that horrible, horrible, record-breaking horrible contract, based on the amount of success that Pokémon had, I would have made more money off of that bad contract than I did in the settlement,” he says. “I wish it would have amounted, in financial compensation, to what it is really worth… If you think that the theme song contributed 1/1,000th of a percentage to the overall from the time it was recorded — which I think is kind of fair — it would probably be $100 million worth of revenue… Of course, it wasn’t deemed so and the revenue was much, much, much less than that. But it taught me in the future to make sure that I don’t work for people that don’t have my best interests at heart.”

Instead, she signed a contract that earned her a flat fee of 100,000 yen (approximately US$771 in today's currency) per song.

What does "Girigiri no Giri" (ギリギリのギリ) mean?

How about Love Live seiyuu? Their CDs song sell almost 40-60K copies every release. Do they also not getting the royalties?

OjaruFan2 wrote:

What does "Girigiri no Giri" (ギリギリのギリ) mean?

It's along the lines of "grinding on just barely" (a native speaker can think up a catchier translation). The show is a so-called "real life documentary" about people who persevere in their (usually dream) profession even though they can barely make ends meet just from that, and may need to work side jobs to stay afloat. Like, seiyuu, animators, performers, pro gamers, etc. It can show someone doing that in the present, or look back at the hard times someone had in their past before they found success.