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.
That makes way more sense, the number seemed super low. Maybe that’s what she gets from the song being in those “Love Actually” reruns every year.
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.
The Neville Chamberlain approach, huh?
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?
Christmastime is the worst.
RE: Fact #13 (Puff Daddy’s Royalty Lawsuit) – Puffy didn’t even write the words, he just produced the song.
That’s pretty normal in hip hop. It’s one thing if someone writes all your songs, that’s just not cool, but sometimes artists will come up with lyrics that would fit another artist better and give them the verse.
Like, they’ll write a song and think, “___ could really nail this the way I hear it in my head.”
DJ Khaled checking in with his team: another hit on the way!
RE: Fact #29 (Tetris Royalties Post-Soviet Era) – He’s a cool dude, I met him in person.
It’s weird, everyone knows Tetris, but I bet most people couldn’t tell you who made it. I had no idea it was invented by one person until today.
It’s pretty much the same for most inventions, right? I find it more interesting that most people don’t know who invented the refrigerator or the computer chip.
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!
Greg Kihn’s a cool dude. I remember hearing him say years ago that he gets his “Weird Al money” every month, which is the royalties for the parody of his song.
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!
Sue for a billion, settle for a million, you’re a million bucks richer.
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.
I was hanging out at the airport, bored out of my mind, when this Bryan Cranston book just jumped out at me. I was tempted to buy it right then and there, but then I thought, “Nah, I’ll wait and get it somewhere cheaper.” So, I added it to my “to-buy” list and moved on.
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.
That doctor is amazing, like a superhero for addicts. They might have even been the key to the Allies winning the war.
It’s wild that Hitler lasted as long as he did, right? There had to be other tries to take him out besides the Stauffenberg one, no?
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.
I’m just going to assume they were more legit back then.
Back in the 1950s, the American Red Cross said that white blood was good for everyone, but Black blood was only for Black people. Southern chapters held onto this belief all the way into the 1970s.
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.
It’s not “super rude”, it’s just not the right way to say it. You’re the one taking offense.
RE: Fact #1 (Pharrell’s Minimal Royalties – Happy) – He’s bummed.
He’s got a place to stay.
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.
Looks like you’ve got the numbers right.
RE: Fact #20 (Mein Kampf Royalties Distribution) – He’s awesome! He took down Hitler and gave all the money he made to good causes.
That guy was a real jerk, though. Why kill the guy who took down Hitler?
That’s messed up. Hitler was killed by someone, and then that person was also killed. It’s like a twisted loop.
RE: Fact #4 (Dolly Parton’s Song Royalties) – Time to get motivated!
Yawning and stretching, trying to wake up.
RE: Fact #44 (Stephen King’s Book Royalties) – It’s funny, the same thing happened to Between Shades of Grey. People were looking for Fifty Shades of Grey, but ended up buying the wrong book. It’s actually a better book though, and it helped the author become more well-known.
RE: Fact #23 (Nas’s Daughter’s Album Royalties) – Nas’s album, *Stillmatic*, dropped on December 18th, 2001, and sold a crazy 342,600 copies in its first week! It hit number 5 on the Billboard 200 chart. Check out the back of the *Stillmatic* CD, and you’ll see Destiny Jones listed as an Executive Producer in the bottom right corner. Destiny even posted on Instagram in December 2017 about *Stillmatic* being the first album she executively produced, saying, “Happy 16th Birthday Stillmatic! The first album I ever executive produced! And at only 7 years old lol.”
It’s crazy how an album with 342,600 sales only debuted at number 8 back in the day. Now, anything with over 300,000 first week sales is practically guaranteed to top the charts.
Wonder if Drake’s ever hit up Nas’ daughters on social media.
RE: Fact #7 (Richard Ashcroft’s Royalties for Symphony) – I ran into that guy on the street the other day.
RE: Fact #18 (John Garand’s Unpaid Royalties) – It’s weird that Garand never got a dime for his M1 rifle design, even though millions of them were made. He gave up all the rights to his inventions back in 1936. He didn’t have to be paid, but it does seem a little unfair to give him nothing at all.
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. It’s not like it’s some big deal.
I’m a designer for a tech company. We get paid to do our jobs, and that’s that. No one expects royalties for designing or developing stuff for the company.
It would be different if the army just took Garand’s idea and built it. But he was working for them, developing and refining it until it was ready. So why would he have rights to the finished product? Seems pretty strange to me.
It’s true he was just following orders, but a lot of folks still think the US should owe someone for that amazing weapon. Patton even called it the “greatest battle implement ever devised”! It definitely saved a lot of American lives with all that extra firepower.
Kind of rude, even a bit boorish, actually.
Yeah, Garand was a government worker, right? At Springfield Armory. So, that probably means he didn’t get any royalties from the manufacturing. If he’d been with a private gun company, he might have gotten a piece of the profits.
Browning left Winchester and went to FN Herstal because he wasn’t getting paid for his designs. So yeah, it’s possible.
It depends on what kind of deal he got. Most places give you a little bit of the company stock and a bonus based on how much they make each year, but they don’t usually give you a share of the money made from a particular product you worked on.
RE: Fact #8 (Lonnie Johnson’s Super Soaker Royalties) – Remember those Super Soakers that could blast water forever? Now they’re all puny! I found some that said they reach 30 feet, but they look like regular squirt guns. I need some serious firepower to take down my kids!
This lawsuit’s making it tough to get those super soakers with the big pumps because of licensing.
So now they’re just attaching the pump straight to the water, so you don’t have to store pressure and release it with a trigger. Or they use a weak electric pump.
At least with Nerf, the spring blasters work well, and electric motors have gotten way better.
Patents only last for 20 years, right? So, shouldn’t the technology behind the Super Soaker be public domain now?
Is there more to it than that?
They’re discontinued, something about licensing. You can find old ones on eBay for about $250 though.
They’re back!
RE: Fact #22 (Peter Pan’s Perpetual Royalties) – So, it’s not the only thing. Everything in the British Museum is under “crown copyright”, and it lasts forever.
The British Museum was awesome, but wow, they really took stuff from everywhere! Like, every culture imaginable is there in London. The whole Parthenon is there, but then you see stuff from China, Korea, Native Americans, even the Aztecs. I mean, I literally think the only culture missing was Japan.
RE: Fact #21 (The Lion Sleeps Tonight Royalties) – Disney’s been playing a lot of games with copyright, so I don’t feel bad for them.
RE: Fact #42 (Alaska’s Oil Royalty Payments) – Governor Jay Hammond came up with this awesome system, but the $1,000 a year it gives out doesn’t really cover how expensive it is to live in Alaska. Politicians are always trying to get their hands on it, especially this year with the huge budget hole. It’s like the golden goose, don’t try to mess it up.
What makes things so expensive? Is it just the cost of getting stuff to people?
Yes
RE: Fact #43 (Forrest Gump’s Royalty Dispute) – Apparently, they used Hollywood Accounting to make it look like “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” lost a ton of money – $167 million, to be exact.
So, the guy who played Darth Vader got stiffed on royalties because they said *Return of the Jedi* didn’t make money. But a big part of a movie’s cost is marketing, and they just hire a company they own to do it! Shady stuff.
RE: Fact #46 (Finnish Taxi Music Royalties) – They call it the Teosto Mafia for a reason, they’ll try to squeeze every penny out of you. And get this, the artists don’t even get the money! Teosto just divvies it up their own way.
RE: Fact #24 (Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Royalties) –
The lyrics are as follows:
Beyond
The rim of the star-light
My love
Is wand’ring in star-flight
I know
He’ll find in star-clustered reaches
Love,
Strange love a star woman teaches.
I know
His journey ends never
His star trek
Will go on forever.
But tell him
While he wanders his starry sea
Remember, remember me.
We used to sing that in choir back in high school. I have no idea why.
RE: Fact #13 (Puff Daddy’s Royalty Lawsuit) – So, P. Diddy just went ahead and used Sting’s song without asking. He pays Sting about 2K a day for it, but Sting still owns the song. P. Diddy still owns the record itself, though, and gets all the profits from that.
That’s actually not true, the A&R who worked there when the album came out tweeted about it. She and others who worked there try to clear it up, but the rumor keeps coming back every year. Apparently, Sting said it in an interview once, and Puffy joked about it being 5k a day, but the deal was made before the album even dropped, even if it was a big amount.
Yeah, the headline made me think the guy was a jerk, but this explains it better, thanks.
Thanks for fixing that fact. My autistic self couldn’t take it.
RE: Fact #29 (Tetris Royalties Post-Soviet Era) – My old college prof swore Tetris was ripped off from his thesis! Apparently, it was about visualizing how computer memory works, and some guy heard him talking about it and turned it into a game.
Did your teacher grow up in the Soviet Union?
That’s pretty wild. He actually worked on the Russian nuclear program, right up until the year after Chernobyl happened! Then he moved to Canada. Talk about timing.
RE: Fact #41 (Sheryl Crow’s Song Royalties) – And the poet, Wyn Cooper, later got sued by his friend for using a quote from him in the poem:
RE: Fact #41 (Sheryl Crow’s Song Royalties) – Wyn Cooper was teaching poetry at my college when his song blew up. He went from nobody to rich in like a year, grew a huge beard, and got himself a red convertible. He seemed like a cool guy, but it was kinda strange seeing him lose his mind a little during that whole wild ride. I mean, we were just college kids, no way we could understand what that must’ve been like for him.
RE: Fact #21 (The Lion Sleeps Tonight Royalties) – I could just burst into that song at any moment.
RE: Fact #11 (Norman Greenbaum’s Song Royalties) – It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. I remember reading about this years ago. Greenbaum was washing dishes when “Spirit in the Sky” got picked for the Apollo 13 soundtrack. He’s been doing okay ever since.
The Guardians probably got him a new place.
I think it’s used in Contact too.
RE: Fact #40 (Osage Native Americans’ Royalties) – This book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann is really good, it talks about all this stuff. It’s super engaging, you won’t want to put it down. Plus, it says they were the first to include mineral rights in their deals.
RE: Fact #29 (Tetris Royalties Post-Soviet Era) – The Tetris B theme is just the best, I could listen to it for ages on YouTube.
RE: Fact #1 (Pharrell’s Minimal Royalties – Happy) – David Crosby wrote a really interesting article about how little digital music companies pay artists. You’d be surprised how small those payments are.
Pandora drops 150 grand on the music label for three months of this song, and the label gives the artist a measly 3K?
Then the Sony/ATV CEO has the nerve to tell Pandora they’re not paying enough because Pharrell only got 3K?
The problem is with Sony, not Pandora.
RE: Fact #18 (John Garand’s Unpaid Royalties) – It’s pretty standard. I’ve got a bunch of patents, but they’re all tied to my old jobs – that’s just how it works. I’ve even got patents on every single overhead light fixture in every Target store in the country! I designed every part, and I even got a few plaques to show for it.
RE: Fact #39 (Mike Love’s Song Royalties) – Not the worst thing Mike Love’s ever done.
RE: Fact #17 (Jeopardy! Theme Royalties) – Reminds me of the time Robert Altman used one of his son’s poems for the theme song of MASH. The movie became a hit, then a TV show, and his son ended up making a fortune from the royalties. Talk about a sweet deal! To show his thanks, he got his dad a plaid tie for Father’s Day.
RE: Fact #3 (Cliff Burton’s Scholarship Royalties) – Ray Burton’s family had a really tough time, they lost another kid before. Cliff started playing bass when he was 13 after his brother died. His parents said he was like, “I’m gonna be the best bassist for my brother.”
RE: Fact #31 (Tasmanian Devil Royalties Donation) – This article is a bit old, but I was wondering if the research they talked about, the one funded by WB, actually led to that crazy finding about Tasmanian Devils spreading their facial cancer. I saw a TED Talk about it that was really interesting.
It’s weird that the fact is about Warner Bros giving money, not the crazy fact that cancer can be contagious and some tumors are basically parasites.
RE: Fact #33 (Operation Game Creator’s Royalties) – He sold the game for $500, lock, stock, and barrel. He’s the one to blame, he’s really bad at negotiating.
But, this is a good example of how messed up copyrights and patents are these days. Yeah, it was all legal and it’s his fault for being dumb, no one stole anything – but it still doesn’t feel right. When someone makes something amazing for everyone, they should get the benefits, not some company who just signed a lucky little contract. The whole point of copyright was to reward creativity, not make it about being clever.
The Superman story is a good example. Back in ’38, the guys who made Superman sold their character to DC for a measly $130. When Superman became a big hit, they didn’t get any money because they no longer owned him. They spent their whole lives suing and calling out DC to get some money. Finally, DC started giving them a little something so they’d stop making a fuss, but they never got rich. Not like Bob Kane, who made a better deal and became a millionaire. Bob Kane probably had less to do with Batman than the guys who created Superman had with their character, but he made a lot more money because he was a better negotiator.
Yeah, it was all legal, but we’re the ones who decide what’s legal, right? It’s a common story and we should change the system so it doesn’t happen so much. The way it is now, it’s not doing what it’s supposed to.
RE: Fact #26 (Alec Guinness’s Star Wars Royalties) – You might be wondering how much Sir Alec made from all this. Well, thanks to the Star Wars re-releases in the 90s, he and his estate have earned over $95 million from the franchise. Even though he passed away in 2000, his estate keeps making millions from royalties, licensing deals, and merchandise. To give you an idea, he made more money playing Obi-Wan Kenobi than he did from all his other 40 films combined – even his Oscar-winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai!
He got paid $95 million for just 17 minutes of screen time! That’s a lot of cash. Not bad. But the thing about him doing all that acting in one day, that was just some dumb rumor on factrepublic.
RE: Fact #14 (Monty Python’s Spamalot Royalties) – Whoa, how do you end up owing 800k in royalties?
RE: Fact #5 (Paul Desmond’s Royalties for Charity) – I’m a sucker for songs with funky time signatures.
Check out Dave Brubeck’s version if you want to hear what I mean.
RE: Fact #40 (Osage Native Americans’ Royalties) – That once-wealthy place is now a deserted ghost town.
Probably made a ton of money for some real jerks. Their kids are probably spoiled and never had to lift a finger.
They gotta work, you know, to keep the system rigged in favor of the folks who don’t actually work.
RE: Fact #23 (Nas’s Daughter’s Album Royalties) – He once said in an interview, “See, I’m a good guy, I’m tryin’ to stick around for my daughter. But if I should die, I know all of my albums support her.”