1 Pharrell’s Minimal Royalties – Happy
Pharrell earned only $2,700 in songwriter royalties from 43 million plays of “Happy” on Pandora.
2. When Ulysses S. Grant was broke and dying of throat cancer, Mark Twain offered an unprecedented 75% of royalties to his widow for him to write his memoirs. Julia Grant received $450,000 from these royalties.
3. Ray Burton, the father of Cliff Burton, used Cliff’s royalties from the first three Metallica albums to fund scholarships for kids at Castro Valley High School. Ray wanted to keep his son’s name alive by supporting students through college with his son’s royalties for 30 years.
4. Just two of Dolly Parton’s songs, “Jolene” and “9 to 5,” gross about $6 million to $8 million per year in royalties.
5. Upon his death in 1977, jazz composer Paul Desmond left the rights to royalties from his performances and compositions, including “Take Five,” to the American Red Cross. The organization has since received approximately $100,000 per year in royalties.
6 FRIENDS Cast’s Annual Royalties
The cast of the popular television sitcom FRIENDS each receives $20 million in royalties per year, while NBC earns $1 billion in revenue from the series.
7. The royalties for The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” now go to its songwriter, Richard Ashcroft. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards finally agreed in 2019 to grant him authorship of the song and all future royalties it generates.
8. In 2013, Lonnie Johnson, the creator of the “Super Soaker” (the world’s best-selling toy), was awarded $72.9 million in a Hasbro settlement for unpaid royalties.
9. Every year, Mariah Carey earns £376,000 (approximately $485,000 USD) in royalties from “All I Want for Christmas.”
10. Ariana Grande receives less than 10% of the royalties for her 2019 single “7 Rings.” Most of it goes to the estate of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the songwriters of “My Favorite Things.”
11 Norman Greenbaum’s Song Royalties
Norman Greenbaum wrote the famous song “Spirit in the Sky” in just 15 minutes and has been living solely on royalties for the last 50 years.
12. Al Green earned more royalties from the Big Mouth Billy Bass toy than from any other source for his song “Take Me to the River.”
13. I’ll Be Missing You by Puff Daddy was a huge success, spending 11 weeks at number one. However, Puff Daddy did not secure the rights to the song, so Sting sued and owns 100% of the royalties until 2053.
14. Monty Python reunited for Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014) because they suddenly owed £800,000 to Mark Forstater over Spamalot royalties. These ten shows were their first live ensemble performances in 34 years.
15. The surviving SEAL from the events that inspired “Lone Survivor” supports the Afghan man who saved him with royalties from the book.
16 Bryan Cranston’s Show Royalties
While working on “Malcolm in the Middle,” Bryan Cranston joined a songwriter’s guild to receive royalties for the tunes he hummed and whistled on the show. He threw parties for the cast and crew with the royalty checks, and as a result, the crew encouraged more humming.
17. The famous Jeopardy! “Think!” theme was composed by the show’s creator, Merv Griffin, in less than a minute as a lullaby for his son. By 2005, he had made over $70 million in royalties from that song, the equivalent of a Jeopardy! contestant winning every game for about a decade.
18. John Garand, who designed the M-1 rifle that bears his name, never received any royalties for the design. Despite producing almost six million rifles, Congress failed in its attempt to award him $100,000.
19. Following a lawsuit, Vanilla Ice purchased the rights to “Under Pressure” to avoid having to pay further royalties. He had sampled the bassline of “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie for his hit song “Ice Ice Baby” without permission, leading to legal action and the need to secure the rights to avoid ongoing royalty payments.
20. Bavaria begrudgingly accepts royalties from Mein Kampf, then distributes them to charity.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 The Lion Sleeps Tonight Royalties
The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” sung by Timon and Pumbaa in the original Lion King, led to a major lawsuit. Solomon Linda originally composed the song in 1939, and his family won a settlement for royalties in 2006 worth $1.6 million.
22. The Great Ormond Street Hospital can receive royalties from Peter Pan in perpetuity, making it the only UK copyright to do so. This earned it the moniker “the copyright that never grows up.”
23. Nas listed his then 7-year-old daughter, Destiny Jones, as an executive producer on his fifth studio album, “Stillmatic” to ensure she would always receive royalty checks from the album.
24. Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics for the Star Trek theme, never intending for them to be used, to earn 50 percent of the royalties.
25. Bob Marley gave credit on “No Woman, No Cry” to one of his friends who ran a soup kitchen to ensure the royalty checks would keep it open.
RE: Fact #9 (Mariah Carey’s Christmas Royalties) – That number’s probably way higher, you know? From ’94 to ’17, the song made $60 million in royalties. That’s like $2.6 million a year. And since she wrote and sings it, I bet she gets more than 18% of that.
Plus, don’t forget the remix with Justin Bieber!
Someone else said it was closer to $3.4 million a year, which seems about right. Every year since 1994!
RE: Fact #9 (Mariah Carey’s Christmas Royalties) – That’s probably just her UK sales and plays, not the whole world.
RE: Fact #22 (Peter Pan’s Perpetual Royalties) – Maybe if we just let Disney keep Mickey Mouse, they’ll stop messing with our laws and leave other companies alone.
RE: Fact #9 (Mariah Carey’s Christmas Royalties) – I work at a Christmas amusement park. This song is part of one of the light shows they put on every half hour. The show runs for four hours, and they alternate between two different shows, so this song plays four times a night. They do this three nights a week for seven weeks. So, I’ll be hearing it 84 times this year, without even turning on the radio or going to a store. And it’s not even the worst song they play.
I’m curious, what’s the absolute worst song on the show?
RE: Fact #13 (Puff Daddy’s Royalty Lawsuit) – Puffy didn’t even write the words, he just produced the song.
RE: Fact #29 (Tetris Royalties Post-Soviet Era) – He’s a cool dude, I met him in person.
RE: Fact #8 (Lonnie Johnson’s Super Soaker Royalties) – The original yellow Super Soaker was totally awesome when I was a kid.
RE: Fact #11 (Norman Greenbaum’s Song Royalties) – Back in the late 90s, in the Bay Area, Greg Kihn, the local DJ and former rock star, called up Greenbaum for an interview on his show. Norman’s mom answered the phone and said he was out back with the goats. Turns out, he was a goat farmer!
RE: Fact #39 (Mike Love’s Song Royalties) – Asher’s usually cool with how the credit is split, but he’s always felt a bit bummed about “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” He wrote all the lyrics, inspired by talks with Wilson, but settled for his usual half of the writing credit. It turned into a huge hit from the album.
Mike Love claims he added a single line to the song in the studio.
When Love sued Brian Wilson in 1994 over the songwriting credits for 35 songs, he included “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” because of that line. Now, Love gets a third of the songwriting royalties, split between the three writers. This means Wilson gets half the money for writing all the music, Love gets a third for writing “Good night baby, sleep tight baby”, and Asher gets a sixth, half of Love’s share, for writing all the rest of the lyrics.
It’s not like anyone is doing anything wrong. Love wrote the entire lyrics or a big chunk of them for most of the songs in the lawsuit. Since the lawsuit covered so many songs, they used the same formula for songs like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” even though he only wrote a little bit, and for songs like “California Girls” where everyone agrees Love wrote the whole lyrics. It’s just a bunch of reasonable decisions that make sense on their own, but they left Asher getting a lot less money from one of his biggest hits than he should.
RE: Fact #2 (Ulysses S. Grant’s Royalty Deal) – Mark Twain was seriously cool.
RE: Fact #50 (Getty Images’ Photo Royalties) – How is this even possible. That woman needs a better lawyer.
A billion dollars? That’s just crazy!
RE: Fact #5 (Paul Desmond’s Royalties for Charity) – One of the all-time greats on the sax. A music critic said he was like a dry martini, super smooth and sophisticated.
RE: Fact #16 (Bryan Cranston’s Show Royalties) – His book, “A Life in Parts,” is really good. He actually narrates it himself on Audible, so you can hear his voice. He talks about this stuff in detail, along with a bunch of other cool things from his life.
RE: Fact #43 (Forrest Gump’s Royalty Dispute) – Hmm, I wonder what movie I should download today… Thanks for the list of companies in the article, I’ll be grabbing some movies from them.
RE: Fact #38 (Heinrich Hoffmann’s Royalties from Hitler) – Hoffman also hooked Hitler up with Eva Braun and Dr. Theodor Morell, the guy who gave him all those crazy drugs, like amphetamines, cocaine, oxycodone, barbiturates, morphine, strychnine, and testosterone.
RE: Fact #5 (Paul Desmond’s Royalties for Charity) – He meant well, but the American Red Cross has gotten pretty messed up. There are a bunch of stories about it online, some really bad stuff.
RE: Fact #48 (Alice Cooper’s Band Royalties) – He’s a born-again Christian, you know, the kind that’s super serious about it.
RE: Fact #35 (Michael Jackson’s Thriller Royalties) – Wow, that’s seriously crazy. Bands these days would do anything for that kind of exposure.
RE: Fact #46 (Finnish Taxi Music Royalties) – Maybe you could just use music that’s already free to use?
RE: Fact #49 (Supernatural Beings’ Copyright Royalties) – If they’re real, they’re probably just normal.
RE: Fact #15 (Lone Survivor’s Royalties Support) – Hey, “Afghani” is actually super offensive, you know? Just call someone from Afghanistan an Afghan. Afghani is the name of their money.
RE: Fact #1 (Pharrell’s Minimal Royalties – Happy) – He’s bummed.
RE: Fact #43 (Forrest Gump’s Royalty Dispute) – It’s messed up how much money Hollywood makes, and it’s so easy for jerks to keep it all. David Prowse hasn’t seen a dime of it, for the same reason.
RE: Fact #10 (Ariana Grande’s Royalties Split) – Ten percent of a gazillion dollars is still a whole lot of money.
RE: Fact #20 (Mein Kampf Royalties Distribution) – He’s awesome! He took down Hitler and gave all the money he made to good causes.
RE: Fact #4 (Dolly Parton’s Song Royalties) – Time to get motivated!