Sean Combs -- aka Puff Daddy, P. Diddy or Diddy -- says he was joking last week when he said Sting gets $5000 a day for the rapper sampling The Police song "Every Breath You Take" in his 1997 song, “I’ll Be Missing You.”
“I want y’all to understand I was joking!," says Combs. "It’s called being Facetious! Me and Sting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3000 or $5000 a day for 'Missing You.' He probably makes more than $5000 a day from one of the biggest songs in history.”
Combs sampled the 1983 song without permission, which led Sting to sue for, and receive a judgment for royalties.
Sting, like many A-list artists of his generation, doesn't need to work. But should he ever decide to hang it up, he'll still make $5000 a day without getting out of bed.
That's how much he earns from Diddy sampling “Every Breath You Take” off the last Police album, 1983's Synchronicity, for his 1997 track “I’ll Be Missing You.”
Originally, it was believed that Diddy was forking over $2000 a day, but when a fan tweeted part of an interview that quoted that figure, Diddy corrected it, saying, “Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother Sting!”
In 2003, Sting said, "I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and me and Diddy are good pals still.”
So, while Sting earns $1.825-million for doing nothing, Police guitarist Andy Summers, who, although being the only member of the band whose parts Diddy sampled, and drummer Stewart Copeland, were never credited as a songwriters.