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Paying Royalties facts

While investigating facts about Paying Royalties For Music and Paying Royalties For Cover Songs, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Alice Cooper (the band) broke up in the 70s, at which point their frontman adopted the name Alice Cooper for his solo career. Since the "Alice Cooper" name is registered to the band, Alice Cooper pays the old members of Alice Cooper an annual royalty to use the name "Alice Cooper."

how much can i sample without paying royalties?

Marvel owned the rights to the name Hulk Hogan from '84-'04. For each match Hogan wrestled, Marvel was paid $100. Marvel also made royalties on merch and every project involving his name. When he dropped "Hulk" and started going by "Hollywood" Hogan in '96, he was able to avoid paying the fees.

What is paying royalties?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about Paying Royalties In Quickbooks and Paying Royalties For Music Use I managed to collect.

what does paying royalties mean?

  1. Fatboy Slim sampled so many songs to create "The Rockafeller Skank" (also known as "Funk Soul Brother") that he had to give up 100% of the song's royalties to pay the original artists.

  2. Buying the Guy Fawkes "Anonymous" mask pays royalties to Time Warner, a nemesis of piracy.

  3. Wendy Williams had to pay Warner Music $700 in royalties in order to sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone on her TV show. Warner bought the song in 1990 for $15 million and claims all public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid to them.

  4. According to Hollywood accounting "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", which cost $6 million to produce and grossed over $600 million in theaters worldwide somehow managed to lose $20 million in order to avoid paying any royalties.

  5. Following a lawsuit, Vanilla Ice purchased the rights to Under Pressure to avoid having to pay further royalties

  6. There is an $11,000 royalty fee a climber must pay to the Nepal government to climb Mount Everest. They earn around $3.25 million every season.

  7. The original Baby Ruth candy company claimed the bar wasn't named after Babe Ruth so they could avoid paying him royalties. They later shut down a rival candy bar that was actually approved by Ruth to use his name on the grounds the names were too similar.

  8. Metallica owns the rights to the 1971 anti-war film "Johnny Got His Gun." They bought them because they got tired of paying royalties every time the music video for their song "One" (which uses clips from the film) played.

  9. In order to avoid paying royalties for incorporating bits of the film 'Johnny got his gun' into the music video for 'One', Metallica bought the rights to the film

  10. The New Orleans water meter cover design is trademarked. Artists have to pay royalties to the Sewerage and Water Board and the money raised is earmarked for environmental education, water conservation, and a program that helps older residents and the disabled pay their water bills.

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The Ghostbusters theme, having earned ~$20 Million, caused a series of lawsuits. Parker was sued for plagiarism by Huey Lewis, Lewis by Parker for breaching confidentiality, and Sony by Parker for not paying royalties. Ultimately, it was revealed that neither were the original songwriters.

The writers and performers of That 70s Show theme song, "In the Street," Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were payed exactly $70 in royalties each time the show aired. - source

The creators of a 2007 anti-piracy PSA were sued when they didn't pay royalties to the artist whose music was used in said PSA. - source

The Seattle Space Needle is trademarked, and to commercially publish images of the Seattle skyline with the Needle a main feature you need to pay royalty.

Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian was paid a fixed sum for the game's development by Bethesda; no royalties. Bethesda would pay the company royalties as a bonus if the game garnered an 85 or higher average score on metacritic. It averaged 84. - source

When do you stop paying royalties?

Nina Simone, while brilliant, was prone to outbursts: she demanded a royalty payment from Janis Ian as an exchange for having recorded one of Ian's songs, and then ripped a pay telephone out of its wall when she was refused.

How to avoid paying royalties?

John Wojtowicz robbed a bank to pay for his partner’s gender reassignment surgery. He was caught and sent to prison but while behind bars, they made a movie about him with Al Pacino playing him. John used the royalties earned from the movie to pay for his partner’s surgery.

Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818–January 8, 1880) aka Emperor Norton I, a citizen of San Francisco, CA, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States". He was treated as royalty, issued his own currency, and was payed taxes by some.

The creator of the Chuck E. Cheese robots, Aaron Fechter, only got royalties for the characters he created, The Rock-afire Explosion, not the robots themselves, so the company created new characters to go on the robots to avoid paying him royalties

Even though Wierd Al does not need to ask for permission for his parodies and does not need to pay royalties yet he only makes parodies with permission of the original artists and pays royalties for the songs as well.

To avoid paying royalties, Metallica purchased the rights to the movie "Johnny Got His Gun" for their music video for One

Interesting facts about paying royalties

Despite meeting the written standards for being a Disney Princess, Giselle from Enchanted is not listed because doing so would mean the Disney Corporation would have to pay Amy Adams royalties for use of her likeness

All Finnish Taxi Drivers Must Pay Royalties For Any Music They Play When A Customer Is In The Taxi

In the 1920s when public radio broadcasts began, stations would just play copyrighted music without paying the artists. Only after music publishers challenged them with copyright infringement did they start making royalty payments.

Armand Hammer created a big international school just outside the small city of Las Vegas, NM that brings in teens from around the world for a multi-cultural education. Students range from dirt poor to royalty and most pay no tuition.

Spotify uses a system of fake artists "playing" music composed by ghostwriters to fill in their genre playlists. Spotify pays for these rights up-front and therefore avoids the streaming royalties that come along with the large number of plays.

How does paying royalties work?

Restaurants sing you their version of a birthday song instead of "happy birthday" because prior to it becomming public domain in 2016, it would have been illegal to use it without paying royalties to the songs owner.

In 2002, the FCC granted a monopoly on HD Radio to iBiquity Digital. All manufacturers of receivers must use their chip, and all stations must pay royalties to iBiquity.

Suge Knight (Death Row Records, Straight Outta Compton) made his first big pay day off Robert Van Winkle's (aka Vanilla Ice) "Ice Ice Baby" by dangling him off a hotel balcony threatening to drop him unless he signed over the songs royalties.

The official state song of Michigan is never used during formal state occasions, likely because the state wants to avoid paying royalties to the copyright owners.

Hollywood was started by a group of people that didn't want to pay Thomas Edison royalties for his movie making technology in NY.

The British arms manufacturer Vickers was required to back pay royalties to the German arms manufacturer Krupp after the end of WW1, due to them having sold millions of Krupp patented artillery shell fuzes to the British government over the duration of the conflict.

The reason Kentucky Fried Chicken officially changed their name to 'KFC' in 1990 was a result of the state of Kentucky, which was mired in debt, trademarking their name. The restaurant, which had used the name for 4 decades, refused to pay royalties on their original name, so changed it instead.

'Prince Charming' by Adam Ant was actually very similar to a Rolf Harris song and he had to pay out a large amount of royalties because of it.

The makers of Baby Ruth candy bars claimed to have named it after President Grover Cleveland's daughter. This was so they didn't have to pay Babe Ruth royalties. They then shut down a company that made a bar Babe Ruth approved of.

In 1972, a West German businessman, Hans Beierlein, bought the international rights of the Marxist anthem "The Internationale," which was still under copyright. The government of East Germany agreed to pay him royalties for the use of the song.

The Model 1903 Springfield rifle that the U.S. using in WW1 was so close to the German Model 1893 Mauser that the U.S. government had to pay royalties to Mauser during the war up until U.S. entry

In 2010, Larrikin Music sued 'Men at Work' for the song 'Land Down Under'. Claiming that they had stolen the tune from the Australian nursery rhyme 'Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree' and had to pay 5% of the royalties earned (up until 2002) to him for plagiarism.

Snoop Dog was kicked out of Compton by the gang he claimed to be a part of because he wasn't paying royalties to the gang for referencing them in his music.

BBC Radio stations pay out incredible amounts of money for music royalties - around £3,070 a week to play ONE 4-minute song 15 times on Radio 1.

The company that makes Baby Ruth Bars, not only didn't have to pay royalties but successfully sued Babe Ruth when he tried to cash in on his own name and sought to register “Ruth’s Home Run Candy”

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