A few years ago, I read an article that said at any given moment, some radio station in the planet is playing Every Breath You Take. Sting was pretty amazed by that.
Paul doesn’t make any money off the Beatles songs. He doesn’t own the rights to any of them. He is however worth a billion dollars…literally…due to his very large, very substantial catalogue of music he “adopted”. It seems he bought up every single song he has ever liked on any level in an effort to replace the songs he “lost”.
Really? I always thought that Paul lost the rights to his early Beatles songs. I thought Apple Records was in the Beatles control and they still kept the royalties.
BiblioCat, that is why I included “it” in the Beatles royalties. It was my understanding that “it” owned some of the rights but not all of them.
Well Snopes already covered this. Paul and John’s estate still receive royalties for their Beatles songs. It just doesn’t say how much $ it brings in.
Meanwhile, every couple of weeks Stewart Copeland earns bus fare off “Miss Gradenko.”
Ok, I know the song was popular, and I like the song myself, but why are there so many factoids about this one song? I can think of 15 other number one songs (was it number 1?) that, if we’re gonna quote amazing song statistics, should be counted first.
It was #1 for eight weeks.
I’m pretty sure for a while, Every Breath You Take was in the top 10 amongst Top 40 Songs in consecutive weeks at #1.
He doesn’t own the publishing, which also means he doesn’t get to decide how they are used. As I understand it, though, there is a songwriter royalty on every song sold, if not played publicly.
Ever since I first heard Rush Limbaugh I have wondered how much Chrissie Hynde made from “My City Was Gone” being played 3 times a day on 100s of stations.
Any thoughts?
Isn’t there some sorta performance royalty? If not, then whenever a company wanted to use a Beatles song, they would certainly use an original version rather than a cover version.
I thought I read that a few years ago Paul bought back the rights to much of the Beatles catalog from Michael Jackson and whoever else owned them.
IIRC, from a biography or autobiography of John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, he was able to subsidize the enormous drug habit he had for years because the royalties on “California Dreaming” alone brought in a quarter-million a year.
Of course, when you’re spending half a million a year on drugs, that doesn’t go as far as you might think…
I’ve emailed Aha, who used to be in a real professional, touring, recording band. Let’s see if he swings by to fight our ignorance.
I’d love to know how much Mick Jagger and Keith Richards make per day on all their songs. They’ve been around 4 times longer (more work released) than the Beatles and they too have had numerous “hits”.
To give an idea of the value of “grand rights” in musical theatre, Benny Andersson & Bjorn Ulvaeus are making more from “Mamma Mia” than they did as members of “ABBA.”
Actually, as I understand it, there’s a royalty paid to the performer of the version you’re using, which is why you’ll hear cover versions on commercials. They don’t want to have to pay a royalty to the original hit performer, when they can pay just the publishing and songwriter royalties, and hire any one of a couple hundred people on hand who could make a passable version.
And yet, somehow, I never heard it until this year. Weird.
Boy, is that ripe for an “under a rock” comment. Really?
Of course, my new roommates were very surprised to find that I’d never heard of B2K. Well, if they dont’ get played on the rock or rock-pop stations, they’d have to be ultra superstars for me to notice.