Sometimes a publisher can make you richer than a lottery winner without you doing anything. Placing one of your old songs on a hit film whose soundtrack CD goes ballistic can earn you well over a million pounds, and a lot of new friends. To a slightly lesser extent (although they're still not to be sniffed at), TV adverts are also very nice little earners. A bunch of session players re-record your tune on union rates while you cop up to £10,000 a week in royalties (it can be an awful lot more if the ad is shown in cinemas). This may sound brilliant, but some people would disagree with you.

Take Sting: he wasn't that impressed by the huge amount of money his song 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' earned him when his publisher (at the time) allowed a deodorant company to use it for a TV advert. A year or so before he became famous, while still in Newcastle, he signed a deal with Virgin music. The terms were a 50/50 percentage split, and the company also spent over £2000 (a fair amount 21 years ago) demoing up Sting's band. One of the standard clauses stated that he had signed away his moral right to all the music he would write during the lifetime of the contract. Which meant that the publishers were free to use his music for any purpose which would generate money, without asking his permission. And, as the advert used a soundalike band, Sting couldn't even stop the advert due to unauthorised use of his performance.

As I recall, during the subsequent 11-day trial, he spent around £150,000 not to be able to buy his moral rights back, although the advert came off air shortly afterwards. However, he did raise his percentage to a rumoured 90/10 and shorten the length of the contract (as is the case in all industry legal wrangles, both sides kept very quiet about the details).

Originally posted by devilpants
There's a 60-second rule in publishing royalty law: If your song exceeds 60 seconds in a movie or TV show or commercial you get paid royalties.

Originally posted by Jackskeleton
what song is that devilpants?