It seems that the way to get humungous royalty checks forever would be to write a song that becomes a Christmas standard. The Irving Berlin and Mel Torme decendants have to be the richest people in the world.
So the questions are:
What kind of royalties are these songs producing?
How many years will this go on before the songs enter the public domain?
Can any of you Dopers let us in on just how big of a money machine these songs are?
The same songs are performed over and over by different artists and resurface every year. Can there be anything better than that?
There’s a standard fee for the rights to record the song, plus the songwriter gets a payment depending on radio airplay. I’m guessing the Johnny Marks estate makes a great deal of money from his songs (Rudoph, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Holly Jolly Christmas, Most Wonderful Day of the Year, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, etc.)
Standard copyright for a new song is the life of the songwriter plus 70 years. Johnny Marks (again) died in 1985, so his estate gets royalties until 2055 (I’m assuming he renewed the copyright on all his songs where copyright expired before the law was amended, but he would have been a fool not to)
I’d guess the Marks estate makes tens of thousands of dollars each year. For a single song, you could get some nice change, but it all depends on how popular it is.
New songs are always being recorded. Some catch on. For instance, Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” dates back to 1993. “Do They Know It’s Christmas” dates from the mid-80s, as does “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” And, of course, Marks had all those hits in the 50s and 60s.
Some don’t catch one: do you remember “Ol’ Fatso” or “Donde Esta Santa Claus” by Augie Rios?
However, it’s much easier to succeed with a revamp of an older song these days.
OK, but I’m interested in how much cold, hard cash a song like “White Christmas” generates each year. There is no reason to believe that it is ever going away.
Something like that has to be the closest thing to a legal money machine outside of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.
BTW, they not only get paid for airplay but they get paid for live performances, sheet music and everything else.
IIRC, it was part of the plot of About A Boy.
Hugh Grant’s character’s father had written a Christmas song that got tremendous airplay, and Hugh Grant lived off the royalties.
Oh, true. But the live performances are also under ASCAP, so it’s the same source.
The question has too many variables to answer with precision. White Christmas probably earns a ton for the Berlin estate – probably more than any other of his songs. But only ASCAP and the estate know exactly how much.
My guess is that the Johnny Marks estate makes by far the most money from Christmas songs, since he wrote so many standards that are still getting recorded and played.
At the same time, there are other songs that are probably all that composer sees any money from. “Do You Hear What I Hear,” for instance, is the only song by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne that anyone has ever heard of, but they or their estates probably get a decent check each year from it.
And there are many other Christmas songs that are released and go nowhere.
So the amount can be anywhere from nothing to millions a year.
The name of the song was Santa’s Super Sleigh and they actually wrote it for the movie. It’s even kinda catchy:
Look who’s coming round the bend,
it’s Santa and his reindeer friends,
with a ho ho ho and a hey hey hey
it’s Santa’s super sleigh!
I was actually hoping it would catch on. Hornsby actually based the character in part on a friend whose father wrote not a Christmas tune but a one-hit wonder akin to Jesse’s Girl or Walk Like an Egyptian or something equally silly and invested well, so it could definitely happen. Full lyrics on this site.