Forget dropping the mic; music mistakes can drop millions! Diddy’s been stuck paying Sting a king’s ransom ($730k a year!) for a sample in I’ll Be Missing You. But that’s a small change compared to Juice WRLD’s estate coughing up 85% of Lucid Dreams royalties for an unauthorized Sting sample. Dang!
One sampling slip-up can turn your hit song into a miss for your wallet, and here’s how!
The Price of a Hit: Diddy & Sting’s Sampling Saga
Diddy coughs up millions for a musical oopsie? Dear music lovers—the internet is buzzing with hilarious claims. It seems Diddy (Sean Combs) has been shelling out a small fortune to Sting (Gordon Matthew Thomas Summer) for years, all thanks to what? A single sampling mistake.
Let’s rewind a bit. Remember Puff Daddy’s megahit I’ll Be Missing You, the one that tugged at our heartstrings in the 90s? Well, that song features a sample of Sting’s iconic Every Breath You Take. And per a recent (and quite frankly hilarious) IG clip, Diddy messed up by not clearing the sample beforehand. The consequence? A hefty price tag of $2,000 a day, for life. “That’s a $730,000 a year mistake,” and a total of $5.9 million as of today.
View this post on Instagram
But before you start feeling sorry for Diddy (or maybe Sting, depending on how you look at it), here’s the punchline: it’s not true. Yes, you read that right. While the rumor had everyone talking, Business Insider quickly shut it down. Turns out, Sting, in an interview with the publication, jokingly said that he receives $2,000 a day for the sample. Lolz.
I want y’all to understand I was joking! It’s called being Facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You. He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history.
— LOVE (@Diddy) April 7, 2023
LOVE ❤️😂🙏🏿💫⚡️✨
So, if Diddy isn’t paying millions, where did this whole thing come from? Blame the internet, folks. However, this story takes an intriguing twist. After the tragic passing of rapper Juice WRLD in 2019, he earned a cool $15 million, making him 7th on Forbes’ list of highest-paid deceased celebrities. Given this continuous popularity of his posthumous works, Legends Never Die had two billion on-demand streams by October 2020. That’s $43k per day—far, far more than Diddy’s alleged costs.
But hey, if there’s one thing the internet excels at, it’s creating its own wild tales. In the end, Diddy might not be a millionaire lighter, but this whole thing is a reminder that sometimes, the internet needs a fact check. Okay, but there’s yet another truth about Sting’s royalties that paints a somewhat different picture.
The One Sting Song That Made More Than $20.5 Million In Royalties Alone
Remember Every Breath You Take? The song that dominated the Billboard charts for eight weeks straight in the 80s? Well, that one song is a royalty cash cow. Estimates claim it’s raked in over $20.5 million, with Sting reportedly pocketing a cool $730k a year from it alone.
But here’s the twist: not everyone in The Police enjoyed the same financial sunshine. Bandmate Andy Summers revealed the song caused some creative friction. “There was no guitar on it,” Summers said. “Sting wrote a very good song, but it didn’t sound like the Police.” Apparently, a disagreement over the arrangement had them tinkering with the drums and bass for weeks.
Thankfully, things clicked eventually. Summers stumbled upon a new riff while experimenting with violin duets, and “immediately we knew we had something special.” Special indeed. Sting’s benefit went beyond the song’s success. Variety reported that Universal Music Publishing purchased a chunk of his back catalog, including Every Breath You Take, for a whopping $350 million. Looks like Sting can breathe easy when it comes to his finances.
