The money thing is simple here: A mixing engineer who gets royalties will no longer be able to 100% go for the bands vision, but rather for what they think the market likes. So it is a perverse incentive.
If you are after maximizing the amount of money you earn rather than focus the creation of good work and/or art audio engineering might not be the right field for you anyways. Firstly because there is not a lot of money in it, secondly because there is not a lot of money in it for people who always priorize money over art.
He is producing a mass market product not art for arts sake. In this case how much money the product makes directly and indirectly (future sells of other stuff in the brand) is the measure of it's artistic value.
I've gotten into a few arguments with friends over the years about this way of thinking. I've always felt the same way. I tend to undercharge my labor and sell things for cheaper than they should be according to people closest to me. I pay my subcontractors more than they should be apparently.
I understand capturing as much value as possible, but that's not in the cards for me. I feel as long as I make enough money to be happy, that's ok. Everyone tells me I'm dumb so I'm probably hurting myself, but I really appreciate Albini's insistence not to take so much money.
He's not doing it for free. He has a flat rate to do a certain job. I'm guessing his fee wasn't exactly low for a week of work either (50-100k+?). It removes ambiguity and sounds like a method that kept him quite busy at the time.
I'm watching the Kanye doc on Netflix right now and there is a discussion where someone wanted him to give them beats for points. He responded hell no wanted his fee (30-50k) instead. Not every person he worked with was JayZ, so getting paid well up front was a way to remove risk.
You’ll be forever in debt to my priceless advice.