Founding Police bassist Sting has paid $870,000 to former bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland since they began legal proceedings to recover song royalties last year.
The payment was revealed last week as the case reached the U.K.’s High Court. .
Despite the payment that has been made, Summers and Copeland say the figure doesn’t include the interest that would have been earned.
Summers and Copeland's case centers on an “oral agreement” between the band's members following its formation in 1977. Under the pact, the main songwriter would receive the lion's share of royalties, while the other two members would earn an arranger’s fee of about 15 percent. They claim they that are owed $2 million in unpaid song royalties.
Although Sting wrote most of the group's songs, Summers and Copeland say they made considerable contributions to bring them to their final state. Summers, in particular, has been vocal about the importance of his electric guitar riff to the group's hit single “Every Breath You Take,” which currently has more than three billion streams on Spotify alone.
While the band‘s agreement centers on physical sales, in today‘s marketplace downloads and streaming make up the bulk of music sales. Records, tapes and CDs account for only about 10 percent of sales, according to Music Week.
Although streaming generates meager financial rewards — Spotify pays approximately $0.003 to $0.005 per stream — those streams to add up over time. As per Sound Campaign's Spotify Royalties Calculator, the Police hit "Roxanne" has earned about $2,300 on Spotify via some 968,000 streams.
In response to Summers and Copeland, Sting’s lawyers argue that the group‘s agreement covers royalties “from the manufacture of records” and contend that streaming counts as a “public performance” rather than a sale.
Streaming, of course, was decades away from establishing itself at the time the group made its agreement. Summers and Copeland are arguing that the language of the band’s agreements, last made in 1997 and 2016, should be interpreted to reflect changes in the sales and purchase of music.
Despite breaking up in 1986, the Police remain popular among consumers with numerous hits songs and albums that include Synchronicity, Ghosts in the Machine and Zenyatta Mondatta. Summers has had the longest and most varied career of its members, having played in Soft Machine, the Animals and other bands prior to their formation.
Speaking to Guitar Player last year, Summers said the group‘s arrival in the midst of punk made him become a simpler guitarist, while admitting that his love of jazz often fueled his guitar playing with the band.
His desire for greater musical challenges led him to a successful collaboration with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp in 1982. He saw their unlikely success as a poke in the eye to the Police's record label, which tried to stop the duo.
