Diddy now claims he was joking about paying Sting $5K a day for “I’ll Be Missing You”
Written by ABC AUDIO on April 8, 2023
After making headlines by claiming that the amount of royalties Sting gets from Diddy‘s song “I’ll Be Missing You” is $5,000 a day, Diddy now claims it was a big joke.
Earlier this week, Diddy replied to a clip of Sting confirming that he makes $2,000 per day in royalties from “I’ll Be Missing You” because it samples “Every Breath You Take,” his 1983 number one hit with The Police, Diddy wrote, “Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother @OfficialSting!”
But on Friday, Diddy took to Twitter to walk back his comment.
“I want y’all to understand I was joking! It’s called being Facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You,” Diddy wrote. “He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history.”
The whole thing is really semantics, though. Diddy used the sample without permission, which caused Sting to take legal action: He sued for a chunk of royalties and won. So while Sting may not have personally “charged” Diddy for the sample, the fact remains that he gets a percentage of whatever royalties the song earns, whether it adds up to $2,000 per day — that’s $730,000 per year — or more.
In 2003, Sting told Rolling Stone, “Those guys just take your s***, put it on a record and deal with the legality later … I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and me and [Diddy] are good pals still.”
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