P Diddy pays Sting $5,000 (€4,590) a day for sampling one of The Police’s songs without permission more than 25 years ago.
Diddy, real name Sean Combs, sampled the band’s 1983 hit, ‘Every Breath You Take’, in his 1997 tribute to The Notorious B.I.G, ‘I’ll Be Missing You’.
The mogul recently detailed just how much he’s been stung for doing it without permission after Sting appeared on The Breakfast Show and was quizzed about it.
Radio host Charlamagne the God asked Sting: “Is it true that Diddy has to pay you USD $2,000 because he didn’t ask permission to sample, ‘Every Breath You Take’?”
https://twitter.com/Diddy/status/1643663676031762451
Sting responded: “Yep, for the rest of his life.”
Charlamagne quizzed the performer if Diddy sought permission, “after the fact”, to which Sting replied: “Yes, he did.”
Sting added, however, that there was no bad blood between the pair, saying “we’re very good friends now."
After the clip was posted to social media, Diddy felt the need to clarify how much the royalty payment was actually worth, writing: “Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother @OfficialSting!”
That’s around $1.8m a year. If the order was backdated from when the song came out – some 26 years ago – that’s almost $47m.
Diddy’s hit, with Faith Evans, spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.
It’s unclear how much Diddy has paid Sting over the years, but in a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, The Police frontman said he’d taken enough money from the rapper to put some of his six children through college.
"Those guys just take your shit, put it on a record and deal with the legality later,” he said when asked how Diddy came about sampling “Every Breath You Take.”
“Elton John told me, ‘You gotta hear ['I’ll Be Missing You'], you’re gonna be a millionaire,'” he added.
“I said, ‘I am a millionaire!’ He said, ‘You’re gonna be a millionaire twice over!’ I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and me and P. Diddy are good pals still.”
Sting has also cashed in on other stars sampling his songs, including the late Juice WRLD, for his 2018 hit, ‘Lucid Dreams’.
