Could you "retire" off of royalties from one hit song?

Can an artist retire off of one hit? No

Can a writer or publisher? Possibly

Can an artist who wrote and published a song? Definitely

 

I remember reading Nick Lowe became a millionaire after his song What's so funny about Love,peace and understanding was used in the soundtrack of The Bodyguard (without appearing on the soundtrack album as far as I know). I think I also read once that Jeff Christie receives a monthly check of £ 4000 for writing Yellow River , but here I am not sure since it is a long time ago.

 

If I heard correctly, Aimee Mann was told her and her band-mates OWED money to CBS, after the success of "Voices Carry"!

 

Glad to know that everyone has read "Cruel To Be Kind" by Will Birch.

 

Here's a great article about how "My Sharona" set The Knack up for life. A good takeaway is that smart investing goes a long way. I'm sure there are many, many one hit wonders who threw away every dime because they assumed the gravy train would never end.

The Economics of a One-Hit Wonder

 

Ian Whitcomb inherited a cut of the income from Lady of Spain, written by his uncle, and it seems to have been a pretty useful amount even for a song long past its heyday.

 

Depends. If the song is still getting played a lot, then no. I bet a-ha is making bank off "Take On Me" still. And more than they would from sales in the 21st century, since anyone who wanted that song presumably owned it at some point prior to the streaming era.

But the real money is in licensing: TV shows, commercials, movies, etc. You have a song that people want to use in things, you're going to get money for it.

 

Jazz saxophonist Sam Rivers was overheard once to say that the royalties on his tune "Beatrice" from his debut leader-date (for Blue Note), which became a fairly-known jazz standard (or about as 'known' as any jazz tune first released in 1965)...

...more accurately, backstage I overheard Sam once to say that his royalty checks were modest but decent, almost entirely off that one song. But enough to be a serious supplement to his income. No idea about figures, but I've often wondered. $8K to maybe $10K per year maybe? I have no idea. Maybe only $6K per year in his last decade? (Sam passed about 10 years ago.)

 

Apparently Sting makes about $2,000 per day from Every Breath You Take so yes he could live comfortably off that one track. Add in how much he makes from the rest of The Police and his solo catalogs, he's doing alright.

 

I never read - or saw - "About a Boy"!

 

Don McLean, when asked what American Pie meant, famously replied "It means I never have to work again".

Gerry Rafferty was said to earn around £80,000 per year from Baker Street.

 

That's still a reliable month every year, and given how these songs get played to death, one month of Xmas song exposure is gonna be the equivalent of a much longer span for other songs...

 

FWIW: I have a friend in a band who wrote and performed the theme song for a long-running pay-cable series. (The song was not a hit.)

He did not divulge numbers but said it would be "a nice annual income" for one person. (Alas, they split the money equally and all have day jobs.)

 

Lowe's song is on the soundtrack album. Not his version, but he got the songwriting royalties.

If it'd been in the movie but not the album, he still would've gotten decent money, but not nearly as much. The album allegedly sold 45 million copies world wide!

 

If I can just learn to play and/or sing, get a band together, get signed, record a string of fair-to-middling CanCon songs, find a new rhyme for "Mistletoe" or "St. Nick," then go solo and drop a Christmas single that randomly goes viral?

Maybe.

 

And even before then: while it didn't make him rich, I understand that Elvis Costello's cover had ensured Lowe would never have to get a day job.

On a different front: I read an interview with the girl who wrote "Windy" for the Association, and she said thanks to that song she was set for life at 19.

More recently, I listened to an interview with the singer of '80s goth-pop act Modern English, who said he can live quite well off the royalties of "I Melt With You".

 

I remember an interview with Tom Petty shortly after Gene Clark's death where he acknowledged that the cover of "Feel A Whole Lot Better" on Full Moon Fever basically meant that Clark finally had enough money to be able to drink himself to death.

As for Christmas songs, a friend of mine wrote a new wave Christmas song that still gets played every year (and has been covered a couple times). He fully credits it with buying his really quite nice house and putting his kid through college, and this was never an enormous song.

 

So far Macca has earned approximately $16 million U.S. for Wonderful Christmas. That'll get him plenty of jam jars baby.

 

I'd say a lot depends on how old you were when you had the hit!

 

"Christmas Wrapping", by any chance? I heard Chris Butler on a podcast saying something along these lines, that the song had been an unexpectedly nice little earner.

 

A "bunce," you mean?

 

The version I read was that he made about 750 grand off the placement of the song on that soundtrack, but he said he sank most of it into albums and tours that followed that and were money losers.

 

I’m sure Eric Carmen pops on Rachmaninov’s Vespers at Christmas time, just to change it up a bit.

 

It seems to me that there's at least two ways you can retire off of one song:

1. Make a ton of money off the song when it's first released and in the ensuing years when it's still selling and invest that money wisely.

2. Write a song that gets frequently licensed for use in TV, movies, commercials etc. for many years.

It seems that the songs that are still earning six figures and more for the songwriters or their estates are of the latter kind. If a song is going to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars every year decades after you wrote it, it's going to be through licensing.

 

I thought I read years ago that Bobby "Wicked" Picket made about $200,000/year on The Monster Mash royalties. Very livable on 1 song.