2024 - a mark in time?

[hunter v2.0]

Mark has a property portfolio. No doubt his advisors recommended investment schemes, off shore trust funds and all manner of financial safeguards while Mark was selling millions of albums and doing sell out stadium tours.
Trust me, he never needs to work again. I knew a guy who wrote a couple of hit songs for Michael Jackson and Tina Turner and he never needed to work ever again. Mark is way above that level.

One thing is never having to work again, but the cost of operating the studio and paying his full-time staff (which includes Guy, I assume) is considerable. Plus his album budgets must be insane.

[Love Expresso]

Releasing the EP must not automatically be motivated financially. Dire Straits have done the same within 6 months after Love Over Gold. It might be an artistically decision. Maybe he had left-over songs too good to store or found One Deep River too deep and dark and wants to set a different tone. Or maybe there was just the idea of having fun in the Studio with the band.

Guy has not the usual "our best record so far" tone but indeed sounds exhausted and described the album with "it took very long and it is deep." Maybe they felt that it was too long and too hard work and they want to refresh their working spirits with a little fast recorded EP of first takes maybe?

LE

[Chris W]

One thing is never having to work again, but the cost of operating the studio and paying his full-time staff (which includes Guy, I assume) is considerable.

I doubt he has trouble paying for the studio, but if he was he could allow more outside people to use it. As he doesn't I presume it's because he can cover the costs out of his own finances.
Seriously he has car collections, multiple properties, large royalty cheques coming in every 3 months. His studio contains many rare and collectable items he hardly ever uses he could sell if he needed the money - which he doesn't.

[TJ]

Mark has a property portfolio. No doubt his advisors recommended investment schemes, off shore trust funds and all manner of financial safeguards while Mark was selling millions of albums and doing sell out stadium tours.
Trust me, he never needs to work again. I knew a guy who wrote a couple of hit songs for Michael Jackson and Tina Turner and he never needed to work ever again. Mark is way above that level.

I remember an interview I read years ago where Gerry Rafferty said he made a comfortable living just off the royalties from "Baker Street".

[koobaa]

Just curious what kind of cash we are talking about here. With all the mega hits from the 80's, what might such a royalty cheque look like? Is it thousands or tens of thousands or maybe 6 figure of $$ every 3 months?

[quizzaciously]

Just curious what kind of cash we are talking about here. With all the mega hits from the 80's, what might such a royalty cheque look like? Is it thousands or tens of thousands or maybe 6 figure of $$ every 3 months?

It's of course a highly secretive and highly debatable topic, it all depends on a million factors, and the song's popularity. I remember reading about "Every Breath You Take" that, "As of 2003, Sting was making an average of $2000 per day in royalties for the song." But that was 2003, and it's a very, very, very, very, very popular song and a member of a Billion Club (1B+ views and 1B+ listens). No Mark's song reached this level of popularity and impact.

[dustyvalentino]

Back then he would have also been getting the royalties from I’ll Be Missing You which would have been even more popular at that point.

[Chris W]

There are hit songs and there are HIT songs.
Some songs go beyond being just a hit and end up being played multiple times a day somewhere in the world.
With Mark that is numerous - Sultans Of Swing, Brothers In Arms, Money For Nothing....arguably Walk Of Life, not to mention Private Dancer by Tina Turner. You can live comfortably on one massive hit from the pre-streaming era. When it comes to multiple hits, you never have to work again, unless you want to of course.

[Kris-b]

The german GEMA which collects the royalties in Germany hat about 94000 clients who received one billion Euro in 2023. If my math is correct each client received an average of about 10000  Euro last year.

[quizzaciously]

There are hit songs and there are HIT songs.
Some songs go beyond being just a hit and end up being played multiple times a day somewhere in the world.
With Mark that is numerous - Sultans Of Swing, Brothers In Arms, Money For Nothing....arguably Walk Of Life, not to mention Private Dancer by Tina Turner. You can live comfortably on one massive hit from the pre-streaming era. When it comes to multiple hits, you never have to work again, unless you want to of course.

I lived in a random city on Turkey's south coast for a whole year and during my long walks, I heard Mark's hits all the time coming from radios, cars and speakers everywhere. It was all the usual suspects, of course, exactly the songs you've listed and I never ever heard any other songs apart from those. Sigh... Maybe also Your Latest Trick, You And Your Friend and Ticket To Heaven for some reason.

Man, music business is really a f-up place. How it's fair if you wrote a song, that could become a hit, even if it was written in the amount of time it takes to listen to it, maybe by accident, maybe because your guitar player transformed it from a mediocre song to a masterpiece (talking about you, Sting). Or it may be forgotten, but if it's not — you don't need to work again.

You can write a hit song and never work again, but if you're a professional studio musician who made all this what it is, you'll need to work till you die. Makes you think about all these one-hit wonders, a whole Universe of those, and how it differs from other creative mediums.

[dustyvalentino]

I've recommended it before but I'll say it again, this is a great book on the history of the moral cesspit that is the song publishing industry:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-One-Money-Clinton-Heylin/dp/1472111907

[JF]

the french singer Patrick Hernandez had only one Hit, and to my knowledge, did only one song in his whole career : "born to be alive"

He had never to work again, and lives with only royalties from ONE song/hit

[jbaent]

the french singer Patrick Hernandez had only one Hit, and to my knowledge, did only one song in his whole career : "born to be alive"

He had never to work again, and lives with only royalties from ONE song/hit

Depends on how much you get from royalties, and your lifstyle, of course. Probably all of us would live the same way with the royalties of one hit 

[quizzaciously]

the french singer Patrick Hernandez had only one Hit, and to my knowledge, did only one song in his whole career : "born to be alive"

He had never to work again, and lives with only royalties from ONE song/hit

Depends on how much you get from royalties, and your lifstyle, of course. Probably all of us would live the same way with the royalties of one hit 

That's exactly the type of BS I was talking about. Can you imagine a painter doing just one picture and never working again? And now this streaming royalties controversy and all that... No wonder everybody universally hates the music business. Because it sucks!

[dustyvalentino]

the french singer Patrick Hernandez had only one Hit, and to my knowledge, did only one song in his whole career : "born to be alive"

He had never to work again, and lives with only royalties from ONE song/hit

Depends on how much you get from royalties, and your lifstyle, of course. Probably all of us would live the same way with the royalties of one hit 

That's exactly the type of BS I was talking about. Can you imagine a painter doing just one picture and never working again? And now this streaming royalties controversy and all that... No wonder everybody universally hates the music business. Because it sucks!

Even worse is when you write a hit and someone else never has to work again because of it.