songwriting royalties are one thing; mechanical royalties and performance royalties are something else,
and the recording artists get a share of those. this site tries to explain it: [entertainment.howstuffworks.com]


"What do you want - what?!"
- Keith

Sam Spade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Brad F Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > A few people here have mentioned "selling"
> songs
> > to companies for advertising.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure that companies don't "buy" the
> > songs that they use, they merely license them
> for
> > use in advertising.
>
> Yes, I believe the song(s) is licensed. Didn't
> Miscrosoft pay something like 2 million for Start
> Me Up for their Windows 95 campaign?


At the time (if I recall right) the figure quoted was actually $8 million

Gazza Wrote:

> At the time (if I recall right) the figure quoted was actually $8 million

If that's the correct figure, I'd say Bill Gates made a good investment. I'll bet he did more than $8 million in sales of Windows 95 at that time.

Gazza,

I'm upping the ante. I heard Microsoft paid $13 million.

I know that Bill Gates really wanted REM's "It's the End of the World as we Know It", but they turned him down.

I believe it was on this site that I read that he asked Mick to name a price, and Mick said $13 million, thinking he would never actually accept it. At that time, it set the record for the most money ever paid for the use of a song in an advertisement. I don't know if it's still the record though.

fair enough - maybe I got my currencies mixed up and it was £8 million - which would be around $13 million

we can split the difference!

unbelievable amount of money for a few bars of music for a TV ad that ran for no more than a few weeks.