Courtesy Motown
Diddy says he pays Sting $5,000 a day to sample the police chief’s 1983 blockbuster hit “Every Breath You Take” on his 1997 hit “I’ll Miss You.” Diddy tweeted on Wednesday in response to resurfaced videos from an interview Sting gave to The Breakfast Club in 2018.
As noted before shadow room, the clips show interviewer Charlemagne Tha God asking Sting to confirm if Diddy pays him $2,000 a day to sample “I’m Gonna Miss You”. Sting says yes, “for the rest of his life” to laugh, then confirms that Diddy asked permission to sample the song after his own single was released.
He notes that there are no hard feelings and that the two are “very good friends now,” adding, “It was a beautiful version of that song.”
Presumably, a large percentage of that $5,000 daily value will go to Universal Music Publishing, which last year acquired the song along with most or all of Sting’s song catalog in a deal worth about $350 million. However, while the terms of the deal were not disclosed, it seems likely that Sting kept at least some of the song and shared publishing catalog or songwriters.
The all-around worldwide agreement includes Sting’s solo work as well as works with The Police, including “Roxanne”, “Every Breath You Take”, “Shape Of My Heart” and “If I Ever Lose Faith In You” among other songs Such as “Fields Of Gold”, “Desert Rose”, “Message in a Bottle”, “Englishman in New York” and “Every Little Thing You Do Is Magic”.
Presumably, it will also continue to receive a solid share of the royalties for recorded music and any use of the sync. Representatives for Diddy, Sting, and Universal did not immediately respond diverseClarification requests.
Originally released in May of 1983, “Every Breath You Take” was the biggest hit for Sting’s former band, The Police, topping the US charts for about eight weeks that year and winning two Grammy Awards; It also hit number one in the UK, Canada and many other countries and was a top 10 hit in many other countries.
“I’ll Miss You”, credited to Puff Daddy and Faith Evans featuring vocal group 112, was released nearly 14 years later as a tribute to Diddy’s friend and collaborator The Notorious B.I.G., who was shot and killed two months earlier in a still-unsolved murder. It became even more successful, topping the US charts for 11 weeks and reaching number one in many countries around the world.
Sting was not originally credited on the song and he did not file a lawsuit, but as he said, the issue was soon resolved.