If you get on a Garth Brooks record, single or not, you can make a lot of money. If you accumulate enough album cuts, you can make great money. Mechanical royalties, received each time a song is sold in a pre-recorded medium, such as a CD or cassette tape. Synchronization royalties, for the negotiated use of their music in films. Print royalties, for the sale of sheet music.
Verges certainly knows what it's like to work without singles.
He left that company last year, and the debt will remain, unless the songs Verges wrote for Patrick Joseph are recorded and pay back the advance. He signed a deal with Universal Music last June, and acquired a cut on the new Faith Hill album very quickly, which covered the Universal advance and means he's receiving royalties for the very first time. If Hill's recording of his song, Love is a Sweet Thing , should become a single, then the big money will roll in. But there are plenty of other songs on the album whose writers would also like to see them released as a single. It depends what the promotion staff likes.