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You know the phrase “it’s easier to ask forgiveness that to get permission”? Well, Diddy put that to the test and I’m not so sure he’s so thrilled with the results. Mainly because it’s costing him almost $2M a year. When Diddy recorded the song in dedication to Biggie Smalls, I’ll Be Missing You, he sampled The Police’s Every Breath You Take without asking songwriter Sting’s permission prior. As a result, Sting confirmed in 2018 that Diddy pays him $2,000 a day in royalties. The clip of Sting saying this resurfaced recently, and Diddy corrected his “brother” saying it was actually $5K a day. Good lord! But apparently the two are quite good friends now.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is forever in debt to Sting.
The hip-hop icon, 53, sampled the rocker’s 1983 single “Every Breath You Take” in his 1997 hit “I’ll Be Missing You,” revealing in a tweet on Wednesday that he pays $5,000 a day in royalties to the former The Police frontman.
“Love to my brother @OfficialSting,” he added in the Twitter post alongside a resurfaced clip from the rocker’s 2018 interview with The Breakfast Club, where he first spoke about the agreement, initially stating that he receives $2,000 a day from Diddy.
In the interview, the 71-year-old musician shares that the producer asked for permission to sample the single only after it had been released. “We’re very good friends now,” he adds. “It was a beautiful version of that song.”
Simply because I cannot conceive of this kind of money, after watching The Breakfast Club clip with Sting, I feel like this isn’t the whole story. As in, we’re having our legs pulled to some extent. I’m not swearing to that because I know how serious sampling without permission is in the music industry, but Sting is so flippant in his response, it sounds like there is more to it than just a business arrangement. And $2K or $5K every day for the rest of your life seems untenable. I get Diddy is an amazing businessman, but anything could happen that would make it impossible for him to uphold that agreement for the rest of his life as suggested in the clip. A percentage of royalties I get. But a set amount like that makes it seem like they are having fun at our expense. In which case, I love this. And I hope they continue to put this story out there and increase the amount every time it’s told. And add further caveats with each telling, like Diddy had to rename his kid Sting or something. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt there was a steep penalty, Sting loves his baron-like lifestyle, but I do doubt they would be “very good friends” under this punishing arrangement.
Also, since Sting isn’t leaving any money to his kids, who would get the $5K a day when he passes a way?
What I do believe is that Sting loved what Diddy did with the sample. When we saw The Police on their reunion tour they had new arrangements for all of their songs. Sting said he doesn’t like to keep playing a song the same way so I would think he’d love to hear others reimagine his music. Provided they can pay for it, I guess. And I’ll Be Missing You is a great song, even without the emotion punch behind it.
Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother @OfficialSting! 😎 ✊🏿🫶🏿 https://t.co/sHdjd0UZEy
— LOVE (@Diddy) April 5, 2023
Photo credit: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Getty images and via Twitter
Aren’t royalties based on how much a song actually makes? So if Diddy is paying $5000 a day to Sting, it means he’s making a lot more? Curious if any IP lawyers on this thread can elaborate.
Diddy always would have had to pay something, but if he had sought permission beforehand, he could have negotiated for a sliver of the royalties (if Sting declined, he would have had to rewrite the song). Releasing the song without sampling permission was like handing Sting’s lawyers a blank check.
Let’s be honest here – that was not a simple matter of sampling, 95% of the song is Every Breath You Take with Diddy rapping on top of it.
Sampling is usually just pulling a couple of beats. This was borderline plagiarism and I always thought Sting was very gracious about it as he got pulled into performing with Diddy a couple times (Grammy’s?).
What was diddy thinking at the time? That sting wouldn’t notice he stole his song? He should’ve negotiated.
Agreed, it wasn’t remotely sampling.
But seriously, how does this work out to $2-5K A DAY? Entertainment lawyers have to be very, very rich. This is mad money.
I love Sting, both versions of the song, and I love this story. They both seem fine with the arrangement. I want more success stories like this.
Didn’t Sting and P Diddy sing it together on MTV back in the day? Like on the Video Music Awards or something?
He did. Faith Evans normally sang the hook, and then Sting came out shocking everyone. And Diddy danced across the stage as he normally did lol. I think Sting was chill about it because of the song subject matter and because he knew he had him over a barrel anyway. Diddy should have known better especially since the whole Vannila Ice, Queen/David Bowie thing was like literally 5 years before this.
Can’t believe Diddy would do something that stupid, he knows how the music biz works and the sample is sooooo obvious.
I mean, that’s more than a sample. He took the whole song and just tweaked the lyrics and rearranged it. If it was for any reason other than a tribute to a dead friend and popular musician, we wouldn’t call it anything other than outright theft, and Sting would likely not be so good natured about it.
It’s probably an (exaggerated) average.
I wish someone would sample me without permission so I could have a nice income stream like that!
That agreement is a steal. If Sting took him to court he would be entitled to far more than what Diddy is paying him. And both of them know that. Which is probably why Diddy is so chill about it. And Sting is so casual about it.
I, an old, remember when this first happened and it was an ‘uge controversy. It was also probably how a lot of middle America learned about sampling (not that there aren’t many older and popular examples, but this was a big song with a huge audience of younger people).
Even at $2k/day, that’s $730,000 a year, for a 25 year old song that certainly can’t be making Diddy much anymore. That doesn’t seem feasible.
I’m puzzled why he thought he could “sample” it without permission like that to begin with, foolish move.
Yes, Diddy was a fool for having placed himself into this situation. Maybe next time he won’t make the same mistake.
Also, that comment by Sting that they are very good friends was actually a flippant response. They are not very good friends, as Kaiser mentioned. Not in the slightest.
Probably because other rappers sample and get away with it. James Brown and Parliament/Funkadelic catalog has been sampled to death. I remembered when Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards had to sue Sugarhill Gang for using Chic’s Good Times in Rapper’s Delight. In the early 2000, George Clinton was still trying to get paid for his music being sampled. Maybe artists need to use Sting’s lawyer.
It’s constantly on the radio in the U.K. Obviously I can’t speak to the rest of the world.
The real ripoff here is that the sample was of the guitar riff. Sampling fees go
to the songwriter, not the musicians playing on the trac, who very often came up with the arrangement. Andy Sumners created that guitar line, Stewart Copeland the beat, but Sting gets the money.
Sting actually sold his songwriting and publishing catalog, so those royalty payments now go to someone else.
Being old I remember all this as it happened, and that wasn’t a sample, that was a twisted cover version. I remember being so perplexed by it at the time, a tense, edgy post punk song about jealousy and stalking being rewritten as a saccharine memorial to a dead friend. Anyway, the payout seems fair-ish to me, the courts at the time would have given Sting 100% of the royalties (and royalties were high back then) so this seems like a reasonable settlement.