The Richest Songs in the World Page #2

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I think my dad had that sort of sixth sense that he could

have a hit with it but that if he gave it to Nat, it would be a smash.

And that's exactly what happened, you know,

and the rest is history, thank you very much.

and I was able to go to college, you know what I mean?

Mel Torme once said, "The royalty cheques were staggering,

"absolutely staggering.

"Each time one comes in, Bob Wells calls me and says,

"'My God! Have you looked at this one?'"

According to our calculations, The Christmas Song has earned just over

12.5 million in songwriting royalties.

Yeah, that's a lot of money, you know, you have to remember

that's over quite a lot of time and you have a lot of mouths to

feed so to speak, so I don't ever remember seeing it as one chunk.

HE LAUGHS:

# Although it's been said Many times, many ways,

# Merry Christmas

# To you. #

So, how does a song earn royalties?

Well, a songwriter gets paid for every performance of a song,

for every copy sold, every time it appears on TV or radio.

In fact, by rights, if you hear a song,

someone, somewhere, should be earning royalty payments from it.

There is a set rate payable for that usage, and that is collected

on behalf of the writers, by a central collection society

and then it is distributed four times a year out to the writers.

One of them is timed to arrive just before Christmas, which is lovely,

so it gives everybody just a little bit extra cash just before Christmas

Of course, this isn't restricted to just one country.

Collection societies exist across the world,

taking care of royalties for songwriters who might not know

their music was even being used in that territory.

In the '90s, my band, The Shirehorses, was played on Japanese

radio, and then out of the blue I just received a cheque, for 15.32.

Might not sound a lot now, but...

Well, it wasn't a lot then, to be honest, but, every little helps, eh?

Reliable royalty figures in Britain are very hard to access.

But as a rough estimate, songwriting royalties

account for 7-8p for every track on a CD sold and half that

on an averagely priced iTunes download.

Radio play royalties vary widely,

but at the moment BBC Radio 1 pays around 16 a minute per song.

If you have a hit much bigger than mine was, it's all going to add up.

There are more profitable areas too,

where the fee rates are negotiable.

I would say a growth area has been use in synchronisation

with visual images. Sync rights, as we call them.

These would be the obvious ones of use in a feature film,

or a TV advert, and more recently on websites.

So we have, if you like, a new mini growth area.

They pay a license fee for the right to use that.

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